


A Quiet Riot

by cloudstroke (aQuired)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family Drama, Illnesses, Love Triangles, M/M, Morally Dubious Characters, Romance, X-Men First Class Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-23 23:50:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 50,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aQuired/pseuds/cloudstroke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for <a href="http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/9701.html?thread=21914085#t21914085">this</a> prompt on the meme.</p><p>Erik can't stand the fact that his father has brought home a boy less than half his age.</p><p>But mostly because he's madly in love with Charles Xavier himself. </p><p>[Visual aid for Jakob Lehnsherr's appearance is supplied by Sir Ian McKellen's handsome face.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

 

 

The first time he notices is when his father stops commenting on how he doesn't return his calls.  

The second time is when his father gets ill, restricted to the mattress of his bed, and says, "Maybe I'll get to be with your mother soon."

The third time is when he's chugging down an entire bottle of vodka, forcing it to drift drown his calloused throat, letting it spill over his favourite night gown and splash across his face to mix with his tears.

Erik notices his father is depressed, suicidal, lonely. The whole lot.

And he is a useless son who can do nothing about it.

\---

The medical bills sit on his desk like shells on a shore. So fucking many.  

Erik is unemployed, but worse, he's an aspiring writer. When people ask, he always says the former; it's somehow less embarrassing than his ambition.  

How's Jakob, they ask. Fine, Erik grouches.

Still single, eh, Erik, they smack him on the shoulder. Yeah, Erik shrugs. Mostly to avoid the impending attack.

Hard finding a job ain't it, they pity. Erik scowls.

Don't worry, you've got that whole writing thing going for you.

Erik tosses back his scotch.

\---

If there's any way at all on Earth to be introduced to your father's new partner, it's definitely not that way it goes this morning.

"Dad, I'm going to the pharmacy, what do you—"

He stops.  

His brain stops.

His heart stops.

"Oh my fucking god."

The man—no, the _boy_ in his father's bed, tangled in the red sheets with his hair askew and his leg hanging out, jerks up to conceal himself with the covers, clearing his throat and looking up at Erik with the sorriest, prettiest blue eyes he's ever seen.  

"Shit," he breathes, patting his hair down and pulling the sheets up to his collar. "You must be Erik."

He doesn't have the voice to confirm or curse, he simply gapes.  

"Look... Erik, we can just—"

Then he finds it.

"No, we fucking _cannot_. Get out of here! _Out_!"  

"Please, let me—"

"I think you've done enough." He averts his eyes, panting like a racehorse, and bends to collect the clothes on the ground. A blue jumper. He throws it at the boy's chest. A small pair of denim jeans. He pelts them at the foot of the bed. A green tie. His father's. He clenches it in his fist, pounding it back onto the floor with a growl. He doesn't bother with touching the boy's briefs. He turns around to face the other wall. "I'm going to count to three," he says, breathing heavily. "When I turn around, you better be gone."

One, two, three.

The door slams shut.

\---

He stomps around the house like a riled bull. A boy. A fucking _boy_.

Erik doesn't even know what's worse. The fact that there was a fucking boy in his father's bed. Or the fact that he's a boy. Or the fact that they were fucking.  

He feels dizzy and sick.  

He takes a cold shower, shrugs off the image of cream skin on red sheets, and goes for an angry jog around the park.  

His father comes home looking pale, tumbling to the floor as soon as he enters the apartment. Erik's anger takes a backseat as he helps his father into his bed, internally wincing at the shape of the boy still creasing the sheets.  

Once the coughing, spewing and vomiting takes a rest, he'll address him. For now, he has to help his father sleep.

\---

Emma comes to visit.  

Her father had passed away last year. She always says, Jakob is like my father now.

There must be some intervention to separate him from his father, he thinks, because the next time the door bell rings, all the guests have gone, all the usual people expected to visit have gone, and Erik is too tired to entertain anyone else.

The door opens to reveal the boy he had kicked out of his father's bed yesterday morning.

"Fuck off," he sneers

He shuts the door, hard, but the boy's hand gets caught in between. He lets out a scream. Another casualty on the doorstep.

His father hobbles out of his bed, whispering, "Is everything alright?" Then gasps when he sees the boy he had brought home the other night, holding a blood-drenched hand as he kneels on the floor. "Charles?"

"I'm okay," he croaks, face red, veins protruding. "I just... I just wanted to see you."

Erik stands there dumbly. He won't feel guilt, no. He just won't.  

"Now that you look better, Dad," he says quietly. "I suggest you tell this boy yourself to get lost and never come back." He swallows, curling his hand into a fist. "And then we'll have a chat."

But his father breezes past him with wobbly legs and places his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Are you alright, Charles? What happened? How did you get hurt?"

The boy glances up at Erik, then glances at his father, eyes suddenly soft.

"I did something silly. Don't mind me, I'm alright."

He rises from the ground, cradling his hand to his chest. He looks at his shoes, blood stained, then looks apologetically at the door frame, also blood stained, then looks up at Jakob.

"How are you? I heard you were ill, and I... I just couldn't... _not_ come."

Erik exhales expansively, turning around to stare at the wall. But he pointedly doesn't leave.

"You should be in university, shouldn't you?" A pause, as though their eyes are talking instead. "Don't you have class?"

"I do, but—"

"Oh, for crying out loud," he turns around. "Did I not tell you to fuck off?"

" _Erik_."

"As you know, he's not well, he needs his rest. I assure you, nobody is fucking interested in seeing you right now."

"Erik!" he yells, coughing. "You say—" another cough, "—sorry—" an entire fit, until he doubles over and wheezes.

Erik glares at the boy when his small hand juts forward, bloodied and bruised, until it withdraws. He pats his father's back, feeds him water, and guides him back to bed. The boy stares the whole time, face fallen. Erik wants to lock himself in his room until the boy lets himself out, but when he marches back to the front entrance, the boy is leaving. He remembers his father, seconds ago, weakly hissing into his ear, "at least bandage the poor boy."

Sighing, Erik calls out, "Wait!"

The boy turns around, his eyes widen just a touch at Erik's summoning hand gesture, before he walks back in with his head ducked low.

"You don't have to. I know you must hate me," he mumbles, as Erik washes the blood on his hand under the tap. The boy doesn't wince once. He perks up when Erik shrugs. "My name's Charles."

"I don't give a shit."

Erik is tired. The boy is so pretty. He sends him "back to class" with a bandage wrapped around his palm.  

\---

Jakob's health improves. Erik gets an interview for a job.

They don't talk about it. But Erik's hurt.

But.

Twenty-five years is a long time to have mourned.

_Still_.

She was his wife for almost thirty.

Why.

Why did he have to go and bring a boy home to shag, and why _him_.    

\---

"Rejected," Erik comes home to say. His father is reading on the couch, glasses perched low on his nose.  

"Don't worry," he looks above the paper to say. "Someone will hire you."

Erik huffs. "It doesn't look like it." The question bubbles up his throat like lava.

"You can stay here as long as you want, if that’s what's worrying you."

His head snaps to face his father.

"No, Dad, that's not what's worrying me." He steps closer. "You know what's worrying me? The fact that you found some indecent brat off the street and spent the night with him, and to top it all off, _didn't_ kick him out the house to avoid your son walking in on him, all while having disappeared yourself!" he stops, only for air. "Look at how old you are and how old he is! Were you out of your mind?!"

Jakob whips off his glasses, staring back at Erik with the same blue eyes he has.

"Yes. I am. For being fifty-five and lonely."

"Lonely? What are you expecting at this age?"

Jakob stands up, steadily, despite his discomfort.

"I was simply charmed by a charming young man. That indecent brat, as you say, brought your old man a few hours of happiness. Is that a problem for you?"

"Yes! Because you neglected to think about the son you have at home and what he might think."

Jakob calmly puts his hands behind his back. "And what does he think? That the man who has been both his father _and_ mother for twenty-five years is not entitled to feeling wanted once in a while? All these years Erik, all these years I have been alone. Single. Lonely. And one night a twenty-two year old young man comes to sit next to me on the bench, asks about me, my life, a thousand questions about my son, and makes me feel young. Healthy. Alive. Is that so wrong? Tell me, Erik, was I so undeserving?"

Erik collapses on the couch, silent.  

Then he says it hollowly.

"If you love me, you'll never see him again."

Jakob sighs, walking closer to his son and placing a hand on his cheek.  

"And if you love me, Erik, and care about my health," he takes in a deep breath, "you'll let me see Charles as many times as I want."

Erik shuts his eyes.

\---

If he could sell a book that focuses solely on how much he hates his life, he'd be churning out bucket loads by the day. He could even classify it as a work of non-fiction.

_How Bloody Devastating It Is When Your Dad's Boyfriend Is Really Fucking Hot: The Autobiography._

It would definitely not classify as a comedy.

\---

The boy sheepishly trails Jakob into the house the Sunday after their talk.  

Erik's typing gets significantly more louder and powerful.  

"Erik."

His fingertips ache.

" _Erik_."

He bangs his fingers down definitively before he looks up.

"Hello, Dad. I wonder who the hell you have there?"

Jakob looks at his son sternly.

"Erik, this is Charles, as I have mentioned before." He sidesteps. The boy sidesteps with him. "I would like you to apologise to him—" the boy's eyes widen as he tugs on Jakob's sleeve, "for the way you treated him the other day. Erik, say sorry."

He smiles placidly, removing the laptop from his lap and jumping up to his feet.  

"Right." He bows his head, smiling wolfishly. The boy's brows crease. "I am sorry. For never being able to accept this fucking joke of a relationship." He salutes. "Good night."

\---

He sleeps with ear muffs on that night.  

When he takes them off, it's not what he expects.

The boy is crying in the living room. He can hear his father say,

"Erik is a little... shocked, that's all. He'll come around."

Few hours of happiness, he scoffs. Fuck.  

They really want this to work.

They really want Erik to come the fuck around.

Erik turns to smother his face with the pillow and screams.

\---

The worst part—

Or the best part—

(There's a fine line, these days.)

Is that Jakob is happy all the time.

He exercises now. (Not when Erik had told him.)

He drinks fruit smoothies instead of alcohol. (Erik had made him shit tons.)

He smiles and laughs and pats Erik on the back every time he sees him.

But he only jogs with that stupid boy in his stupid fucking shorts and knee-high socks.

He only drinks the smoothies when that stupid boy wakes up early in the morning and makes them using the fresh fucking fruit he plucks out from the trees of heaven, where he also gets those fucking eyes from.

Erik sees them racing past his window every morning. He pulls back the drapes, eyes down. The boy is up on his tip-toes adjusting the sweat band on Jakob's head. Jakob holds him by his waist, leaning down for a kiss. That's usually the part where Erik swallows and looks away.

Erik wakes up this morning, early because of a job search, and walks into a catastrophic racket.  

The blender is on full speed, a concoction of pink muck and green leaves spinning in it wildly.

The boy is sitting on the counter top, Jakob between his legs, kissing him senseless. The boy has his (still bandaged) hand in his white hair, carding through and through as the older (much older) man's mouth devours him.  

Erik picks up the thick phonebook and lets it _slap_ onto the floor.

Both of them break apart.

"Whoops. Did that disturb you?" He stalks up to the kitchen and unearths a cereal box from the cabinet. He mutters, "I certainly found that disturbing." The boy wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He slides off the aisle, shirt riding up.  

"You're early," Jakob points out, as he pours the smoothie into three glasses.  

"And the two of you are gross, but guess what." He looks from the back of his father's head to the boy's, as they stand with their backs turned to him. "Life is full of unpleasant surprises."

\--

"He wants your money."

"Charles owns a fortune."

"Then you want his money."

"I have sufficient."

Erik drops his fork onto his plate.

"Then _I_ want his damn money."

The whole conversation is had in front of the boy himself, of course.

"I don't mind if you—"

"Charles," his father warns solemnly, placing a hand on the young boy's hand. He turns to his son. "Erik I did not raise you to be so rude. I have plenty money I already give you. Show some respect."

Erik grinds his jaw.  

"I _really_ don't mind lending—"

Erik flips his plate and stands, shouting.

"SHUT _UP_!"

He'd warned his father.

Don't bring that fucking boy to dinner.

Don't bring him into my fucking life.

\---

The boy is always grabbing his satchel and fleeing the room whenever Erik walks into it. Every morning. Same look of terror, same nervous clutch, same desperate escape. He says _hellogoodbye_ in one breath.  

Then there's the day Erik wakes up first.

The boy exits Jakob's room leisurely, ending a yawn. He freezes when he sees Erik standing near the sink.

"Sleep well?" Erik asks him. He rakes his eyes down the boy's very nice, very shapely legs.  

"Um." The boy squeaks.

"It isn't a difficult question." He shifts past the counter towards the boy, as he fingers his shirt cuffs. The boy takes a step back, tripping over nothing.

"Fine, thank you," the boy hisses.

"I thought you were a smart one. That's what the old man always says. He's so smart." Erik tilts his head, placing his hand on the wall next to the boy's ear. "So clever. So intelligent. Is that why he keeps bringing you home against my wishes? Because of your brain?"

The boy swallows. His blush is deep.

"What does my father find so bloody amazing about you that he keeps seeing you despite my protests? Have I not made it clear enough to you both? Huh?"

The boy's bottom lip curls into his mouth. He looks at the ground.

"You have, Erik."

"Oh. So." He folds his arms, to the boy's relief. "What is it about you that my father wanted so badly after resisting in others for twenty-five years? What kind of marvel are you?"  

The boy's lashes flicker.  

"I simply care for him, Erik. A lot."

He slaps the wall. "Dammit and I don't!?"

"You do! I—just, just not in the way—"

But Erik doesn't even realise he can't hear the boy because he's sinking to the floor, crying.  

The boy is insane for reaching forward and petting his hair, bending down and rubbing circles into his back, leaving him a smoothie before he goes to give Jakob his morning medicine.

\---

"What the hell did you do, Erik."

It's that tone. That tone, when you just know your father's had enough of your intolerable behaviour.

"Something wonderful, I'm guessing."  

He nonchalantly continues to flick through the newspaper ads.

"What did you say to Charles."

"I told him his hips looked fat in his jeans."

Sometimes they do.

The newspaper is ripped out from under him in a flurry of grey and black.  

"Erik I've had enough of your petty nonsense!"

His father is screaming at him.  

_Oh._

"He hasn't returned my calls in _three days_! He hasn't—he hasn't sent me one of his _how are you_ or _good morning_ or _hope you're well, take your meds_ texts in three bloody days Erik!" He coughs and splutters until Erik has to stand up, but the older man stretches his hand out to stop him. "And he won't come to see me at the park! Won't attend his door! Nor will he come here! Why, Erik, why? What the hell have you said?!" he pauses to cough gutturally from the very back of his throat. The sound is painful. Tears form in dejected eyes. "I—I miss him so _much_ , Erik, I—"

Can't breathe.  

His face goes blue.

The route to the hospital becomes more and more revised.

\---

Bed rest. Four pills twice a day. So many colours, so many shapes.  

A text to Charles Xavier.

_Dad needs you ASAP._

_It's urgent._

The boy is there in—Erik counts—nine minutes.

_Nine_ fucking minutes.

\---

Four, actually.

He just doesn't want it to be true.

He'll write nine in the auto-bio anyway.

_Fucking four_.

\---

"Where is he? What's wrong? Oh god!"

The boy beelines for Jakob's bedroom door. Erik follows.

"… Charles?" his father's frail voice comes before the boy has even opened the door.

"Jakob!" He pushes the door open. "Jakob, oh gosh, I am so sorry."

The boy sits at his bedside, clasps onto his hand. Erik just stands there.  

"Charles," his old man whispers. "Don't do that again. I got so worried."

"I'm so sorry!" the boy cries, burrowing his head under Jakob's chin. "I will never—I promise, I will never do that ever again."

The older man's hand runs along the boy's glossy hair as he sobs.

"I know."

He very sharply stares at his son.

\---

It's the fifth day of the-boy-as-the-nurse-who-has-practically-moved-in-but-also-so-they-can-sleep-together.

It gets out of hand that morning.  

All his medical bills have been paid for. Every single one.  

He tries to breathe and compose himself.

Just before he's about to roar, the boy is exiting the bedroom. He breezes past Erik to refill a water bottle at the sink. He leaves it under the tap as he turns to go to the fridge but bumps straight into the hardness of Erik's chest.

"Sorry," he gasps. "Didn't see you there." He tucks a hair behind his ear and tries to evade him, but Erik grabs hold of his wrist. The boy looks up at him. Erik's never noticed the slight dimples in his cheeks. They become noticeable in the fake smile he musters.

"There is only one person I suspect foolish enough to have paid for all those medical bills on my table. So tell me now, yes or no, did you or did you not."

"I did," he blinks.

"Why," he growls.

"Your father's ill. You're going through a lot. It must be hard for you to deal with everything. I didn't think you'd mind if I sorted those out. They weren't much."

Six thousand.

Ten, actually, but the auto-bio doesn't need to have that mentioned in it.

"Who do you think you are? I don't understand whether you're trying to replace me or bring us apart."

"Heavens, no!" the boy insists. "I just thought it'd stop the two of you from arguing over something so... trivial like money. You can say you've paid them yourself! And Erik I—I would never try and replace you. I am nothing, but you are his blood."

But he's losing so much blood.  

Erik's grip falters.  

Dumbly, he says, "I _am_ looking for a job."

The boy looks at him with a tiny, faithful smile.

"I know you are. You're trying your hardest."

He sighs. "I am."

"We know." Then he perks up, his hands spread. "I could get you one!"

Erik snarls, narrowing his eyes.

"You really are just trying to be a fucking little—"

"Ever heard of Tony Stark? F-Friend of mine."

Erik looks from the boy's eyes to the freckles on his nose to his mouth. Then his eyes again.

He grabs him by the throat and pins him against the wall. It's playful, really. The boy's Adam's apple jumps under his palm.  

Erik leans forward, mouth dangerously close to the boy's.

Water overflows. _Shhhhhhh_ , it's saying.

"You really are a fucking little shit, aren't you?"

The boy's gaze doesn't stray far from Erik's eyes. His breath is soft against Erik's lips.

"Guilty," he shrugs.

\---

_I hate you, you pretty little moth._

_Why can't I be your beam of light?_

\---

And so it begins.

(He falls in love.)

But that doesn't go into the auto-bio either.  

His readers won't be that thick.  

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all ever so much for being so kind with your comments. :)

Jakob’s recovery takes a while.

Erik and Charles shuttle in and out of his room like two things that can never quite exist in the same place at the same time.

Charles reads out Jakob’s mail for him.

Charles kisses him on his veiny, knobby hands and pecks him on the forehead.

Charles remembers the morning medication and the night, but instead of overtaking Erik’s duty, he simply reminds him, so Erik can give them himself.

He hates it.

Charles puts in the recommendation, “Erik is a diligent, dextrous individual with the kind of ambition and commitment your industry is lacking.”

Erik only gets to read it once he’s in Tony Stark’s office, sitting in the chair opposite him, when the letter is tossed towards him without being read.

Five words.

“Friend of Xavier’s? You’re hired.”

\---

Jakob’s silver brows shoot to his forehead.

“You did?! That’s—that’s _excellent_. I didn’t even know you applied!”

Erik looks up at Charles. He’s standing against the dresser, arms folded, gaze down.

He remembers Charles’s soft voice, “you found the job yourself, you’ll tell him.”

“It was a long-shot.” He swallows. “So I didn’t want to say. But.”

Charles purses his lips. He knows to be silent. It’s a wordless rule they (Erik) imparted. When I’m in the room, you shut up. When you’re in the room, I’ll be outside.

Hating you.

Or loving you.

It depends on what you wear, how you’ve done your hair, what you’ve said to me that morning to make my heart ache. In despair.

 

There was a time he wanted to be a poet.

\---

The celebratory dinner comes a bland week after he gets the job, when Jakob’s better at moving around.

Erik holds him up on his left, Charles is on his right. Sometimes their hands brush.

Erik had insisted that it should only be the two of them, father and son.

Charles had been in the room, of course, when he’d whined.

“Charles is coming too,” Jakob had said, adamant.

“I don’t mind not coming,” Charles had said, very silently, as he wrung his hands. There’s still a scarlet scar where the door lock had pierced his skin.

Charles had been up since five. He’d come straight to Jakob’s bedside after his lessons, proceeded to make cookbook-copied food enough for four, ran down to the pharmacy to get meds, ran back out when Erik had told him they were out of milk, then went to help give Jakob a bath.

“He’s not coming with us, Dad.”

He’s not a part of this family.

He will never be.

He had started to scratch his bruise until blood drew.

“Fucking— _stop_ it will you.”

Charles had fled from the room. Jakob had huffed at him. Then he followed, slamming the door.

When the crying stopped, he could hear them kissing. Wildly, lips smacking, moans too loud to be quiet.

\---

“So,” Jakob’s eyes are practically sparkling as he looks from Charles to Erik. Erik is slumped in his seat, jabbing the fork down on the table in the spaces between the fingers of his spread out hand. “Erik, stop.”

Charles, on the other hand, is sitting with his back straight and his hand on Jakob’s thigh.

From his slumped seat, he can see his thumb applying gentle strokes.

“It’s so lovely to have the two of you here,” Jakob sighs, patting Erik’s shoulder before seizing his fork from him.

“If you had to save one of us, who would you save.”

He’s just trying to be difficult.

Charles has paled.

Jakob yells.

This is his life, now.

\---

_The Unexpected Sorrow When Your Father Prefers His Pretty Little Boyfriend To You: The Autobiography._

\---

Writing excuses itself. Finally.

He goes to stand in the balcony. The old man is asleep. His blood pressure and blood sugar level have both, finally, settled to normal. Charles is in there with him, quiet.

The cigarette between his lips streams out plumes of grey smoke. He has to squint his eyes against the obstruction before him.

“Hi,” comes a small voice from behind.

“What.”

“Just wanted to talk, that’s all.”

He goes to stand next to him, tugging at the hem of his sweater.

“I wanted to say that—”

“I didn’t say you could speak,” he retorts. Curious, he turns to look at the boy.

He’s biting the inside of his cheeks. His sweater is falling off his shoulder. He has bags under his eyes, a crease between his eyebrows. His mouth is slapped shut.

He goes back inside, eyes wet.

Erik shuts his own.

\---

“Erik, come in, please,” his father says. He’s just put down the phone from his ear. This could either be about the phone call, or Charles, who is leaving the room as he enters it. His father pats the bed as he whirls around in his desk chair. “Sit.”

Erik complies.

“How’s your job going, my boy?” he sounds, and looks, revitalised. His pearl white hair is combed to one side, the habit Erik had inherited, but there’s no way his father had done it himself, given the recent ache in his joints. Given the boy who was just in his room.

An image slams down into the front of his mind. Jakob sitting at his chair. Charles standing up, his navel facing Jakob at eye level.

His shirt had been rucked up when he’d left the room.

The image shows Charles with the comb, passing it down over silver-grey hairs. Jakob looks up at him, holding him by the waist. A kiss, somewhere. Anywhere.

Everywhere.

“It’s going well.”

“I’m glad. I’m very glad.”

It could be hiding anywhere on his body.

“Are you happy to see your father glad?”

Erik twists the strap of his watch over and over.

“When was the last time I said I was very glad?”

“I get the point.”

“I don’t think you do, son.” He looks up at his father’s eyes. “I don’t think you understand how much that boy means to me.”

Erik has to look back down. He twists his watch. Over and over and over.

“Hm.”

“I am very happy right now, liebling. And I am an old man who never thought he would be granted this kind of happiness.” His father reaches forward to grab his hand between both of his, ones that have been kissed by Charles’s lips and served as a pillow for his head at night when he had been too unwilling to disturb Erik to request for an actual one. “Nothing will keep me happier than knowing that my two boys can get along. That’s all I want.”

He’s only told him to get out of the house eight times.

He’s only made him cry five times.

He’s trying.

“I’m trying.”

Jakob smiles, paternal, proud.

“Good. Thank you.”

\---

There’s a photograph on the fireplace.

In it he is five, wide-eyed and active, wearing his father’s fedora on his small face. His father is standing behind him, tall, laughing at the camera as he tries to adjust his son’s headpiece.

Charles runs his fingers over the glass that covers it. His fingers trace the bumps and grooves of the frame. He picks it up and clutches it to his chest. He brings it away, then, and walks towards the kitchen.

Erik is there, standing, but Charles is oblivious.

He takes a cloth and wipes the dust off it meticulously. When he’s satisfied, he puts it down on its place. His eyes are tender, adoring.

Erik had meant to pass by the kitchen, but not wanting to disturb Charles, he turns back.

\---

Charles is sitting on the sofa, curled up in a corner, when he gets home.

The boy sucks in a breath.

“Charles.”

He releases his breath, frowning at the acknowledgement.

Erik strides to his room, tosses down his briefcase and jacket and slips off his shoes, before returning to the boy.

“Erik, hello. Um.”

He immediately gets up to leave.

“Wait.”

Erik pulls up his pant legs before he sits down on the coffee table opposite the sofa. Charles sinks back down. He looks like he’s expecting a death sentence.

“Would you like something? Um—would you like a cup of tea? Or coffee, considering… Something to eat? You must be tired… I’ve made some salad and iced tea—”

“Is Dad asleep?”

“... Yes,” the boy swallows nervously.

Erik leans in close to him.

“Do you hate me?”

“What?”

“Do you hate me? Do you wish I wasn’t in the picture?”

The boy shifts in his seat. He has one leg tucked underneath him. His socked feet are curling inwards.

“I don’t understand the question.” The boy picks at the blanket draped over his legs. “I don’t hate you at all.”

Erik fishes for a cigarette. He takes it out and sets it alight against his mouth.

“You shouldn’t—it’s bad for you.”

Erik raises his brows. He very carefully resists blowing the smoke on Charles’s face.

“Since when did you start caring about me? Am I not,” he places it back to his lips, inhales, then removes it, “the only thing standing between you having him to yourself whenever you want?”

“No,” he mumbles. “And I’ve always cared about you. You’re Jakob’s son.”

“So by default…?”

“I just—”

“Whatever.” He blows smoke over his hair. “Tell me. Do you not like being in your own home? You spend every other night here. You’re what, twenty-two? And rich? Shouldn’t you be out partying again, going to clubs, getting hammered, and shagging strangers in bathrooms? Look at you, you’re slaving for the old man day and night.” He scoffs bitterly. “And Jakob’s son.”

“I…” he gulps. “I like it.”

“Slaving?”

His eyes flit up to Erik’s.

“No. I like it here, where I can look after Jakob. And be with him. I like to be with him.”

“You like it here, do you.” He breathes out through his nose, dragon-like. He leans forward, elbows on knees. “As opposed to getting pissed with your friends, you prefer to stay here and look after a man over twice your age and put up with his dick of a son. Yeah?”

He…

Well.

He smiles impishly and says, “Affirmative.”

\---

Erik looks at the boy, and thinks,

Why didn’t I see you first.

The thing is, he did.

He did see him first.

\---

A Wednesday, it was.

Erik had been suffering from something—writer’s brick _and_ block. The whole lot.

He was fresh from an argument with his father. It escalated from the matter of a dish in the sink to his entire, worthless existence.

He went to a club.

He saw a boy.

The boy had a man plastered to his back (his arse) and a man plastered against his front (his face.) Erik had never been interested in men, boys, males—he could appreciate the pretty ones, but he would never find himself attracted to them.

Every other girl in the club faded into figureless blurs.

The boy was enrapturing.

There was no space for him to dance, but he still made it work.

He’d raise his arms above his head, sink low and then pick himself up again, back arched and arse curved out. The man behind him got a treat.

Erik had a clear view, and a drink forgotten.

The man in front was loathe to let go of his neck. He’d undone the first few buttons of his shirt.

One, two, three.

The man licked his finger and brought it down the cream skin of the boy’s throat, collar, sternum.

The boy tossed his head back. The man behind caught the boy’s head on his shoulder. They grinded against each other, hips heavy and motions hypnotic.

A single moment of epiphany later, the man in front stepped forward to slip his thigh between the boy’s leg and rutt against his left hipbone.

The boy sat to the left, apparently.

Clearly.

When Erik guzzled down his drink, it was like nourishing a desert.

He felt absurd.

Music made the ground thrum.

The man in front was using his good sense to snog the boy. Tongues warred, pink against the dark blue strobe lights. The man’s licked over to the boy’s cheek, down his throat, collar, sternum.

One, two, three.

Erik had to leave.

Erik had to beg deities to grant him the sight of this boy naked in bed.

Of course.

\---

Erik sends a text to Emma.

_You have to come see Dad’s boyfriend._

He looks at the words. He snorts. No, it does look bizarre; he can’t do that to her. He edits.

_Come see the boyfriend._

\---

The clink of Emma’s heels are heard from miles away.

“Is this Emma as in the one you went to school with or…?”

“Yes,” Erik shouts at the wall. Charles is still using the bathroom in Erik’s room. It’s disturbing.

Worse is when he emerges in one of Erik’s shirts.

“What the hell are you—?”

Knuckles rap against the door.

Emma steps in. She probably sees (what Erik sees):

A little boy in an oversized shirt and tight-fitting jeans with wet hair and cream skin.

Because she pats him on the shoulder, eyes wide.

“Good choice, Erik. I think I actually approve of this one.”

“He’s—”

“A little out of your league, no?”

Charles snorts like a piglet. Erik glares at him. He immediately stops to brush his hair off his face and stare down at the tiled ground as Emma assesses him.  

She opens her mouth, but Erik gets there first.

“This isn’t my boyfriend.”

“Jakob’s,” Charles chimes in. He says it like it’s his identity. Jakob’s.

Emma takes a step back, heels clicking.

Charles extends a hand, saying, “Charles Xavier, how do you do,” as though he’d felt prompted by the way Emma had blanched and blinked before stomping off to his father’s bedroom.

\---

It’s just the two of them in the kitchen.

Charles is reading a cookbook, neglecting the book on Hereditary Diseases underneath.

Emma and Jakob are quiet inside, the silence stretching out into the kitchen.

“Why are you wearing my shirt?” he asks. He towers over him.

The boy turns around, lifting his pretty eyes to meet Erik’s gaze.

“This is your shirt?”

“Yes, this is my shirt.”

Charles winces.

“Jakob gave it to me, and…”

“What is it with you and just _taking_ things that aren’t yours?! Huh? Just because _Jakob gave it to you_ doesn’t bloody mean you should parade around in it like it’s yours!”

Charles stands up.

“It’s just a bloody shirt.”

Erik leans down.

“And you’re just some slutty parasite who trails him like his bitch.”

The number of times he’s made the boy cry increases.

Six.

He shoves him in the chest (not quite hard enough) and storms into Erik’s bedroom.

Erik follows.

His cupboard is ripped open.

Erik shuts his bedroom door behind him.

The boy’s tears are falling past his lips as he unbuttons his shirt.

Throat, collar, sternum. Navel.

“I’m sorry,” Erik whispers.

The boy tugs the shirt down his arms. He takes out a coat hanger and sets Erik’s shirt on it.

“I didn’t know,” he sniffles, eyes and cheeks and lips wet, “Jakob threw up over my shirt—and, and I had none left, so I let him lend me one. I didn’t _know_ it was yours.”

The boy stuffs his shirt into the cupboard and takes a step back as he slams it shut.

“I’m sorry,” Erik repeats. It’s just a shirt. Just a shirt. He takes a step towards the boy, who shivers, now cold as his hair drips water onto his shoulders. Erik takes another step, hands spread out. I won’t touch you. I won’t touch you. “I’m sorry, Charles.” He reaches out to open the cupboard, watching as Charles turns his back to him. He can see the knobs of his spine. He looks away, up at his clothes, and reaches for the shirt again. He shrugs it out of its coat hanger and tosses the wiry metal away stepping towards the boy. “Charles, here.”

He places the shirt down on the boy’s back, but he still doesn’t move. It falls. He clutches it again, slipping it over his shoulder, then reaches for the boy’s arm to slot it through. He’s pliant. The cuffs fall over his fingertips, so Erik rolls up the sleeve. He looks down at the sea of freckles. He places his other arm through the shirt. He rolls up the excess. The boy’s head bows down, so Erik reaches for his chin and lifts it. Charles fans his eyes shut. Erik wants, wants to smooth the bud of his thumb over the skin of his eyelids. Charles heaves a short sigh. Erik takes each side of the shirt and weaves them together. Button after button after button, hiding cream skin, the hairless body of an adult, red nipples, a small belly button. A love bite.

“I’m sorry. I take back what I said.”

He goes to the bathroom, unearths a clean, unused towel. He goes to the headboard of his bed, takes one of the two pillows above the covers, and tucks it under his arm. He goes to his cupboard again, scours around, then plucks out the shirts he’d grown out of since last fall. He finds a few. He turns to Charles. The boy gawks up at him.

Erik hands him the shirts, the towel, the pillow. The boy takes each, then drops them all at his feet.

He walks into Erik’s chest.

He wraps his arms around Erik’s chest.

His nose is pressed against Erik’s shirt.

“I just want you to like me,” he whispers, uneven. “What can I do. What can I do to make you like me?”

Erik takes in a deep breath.

Charles heaves against him as he does.

Slowly, he pulls free of Charles’s embrace.

He takes each arm, forces the hands apart from where they’re interlocked at his back, and pulls them down. Charles looks bewildered as Erik takes a step back from him.

“Erik—”

Erik closes the door behind him as he leaves.

\---

What the hell can Charles do, he thinks.

He begins to laugh.

\---

It's time to move out, he thinks. 


	3. Jakob's POV Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again guys for all your comments. After reading some of them, I decided to write this Jakob POV interlude. So this chapter basically features the events that lead into the first chapter.  
> If you're not keen on Age Disparity, look away. Or read between the cracks of your fingers? 
> 
> Thanks as always are due to my lovely beta, Cat.

The park bench must know his hunched posture by now. He sinks into it, familiar wooden planks against the old jacket on his back.

He adjusts his hat and looks around at the green view. Birds settled on barks, beaks in their ruffled feathers. The youthful and young, scattered over the grass with ball games.

A small voice behind him, saying,

“Sir? Excuse me, sir?”

He drifts back to himself, startling as he twists in his seat.

“Yes?” he says, looking up at the young man standing behind him.

“You dropped this,” he says, his smile angelic and his accent clipped, as he hands Jakob an envelope. Jakob takes it from the man, flipping it over to see that beyond the mud marks, it is indeed his.

“Thank you,” he says, looking up at the young man again. “Thank you very much.”

“I didn’t peek,” he says, clasping his hands together.

Jakob chuckles, “I trust you.”

A small part of him does. The angelic young man, who had come out of nowhere to deliver the letter he’d dropped and make him laugh and smile, would now leave Jakob back to his mulling state on the park bench.

Or not.

Jakob smiles at him once more, then turns back around to face the front.

He is surprised to see little knees next to his.

“Do you mind…?” Jakob turns to look at the young man. “You don’t mind me sitting here, do you?”

“Oh. Of course not.”

A little while longer with that angelic smile, he thinks. His friendly smile is returned to him with a sweet, compassionate expression.

It’s been long since a stranger that young has showed him such excessive politeness. Jakob folds the letter and tucks it into his pocket.

He sighs.

Breeze blows.

His fedora whips right off his head and flies out onto the grass.

“Heavens!” the young man next to him cries out, jumping to his feet. Jakob only realises the loss of his hat when he feels wind against his hair and the angelic young man running after his hat. Jakob stands up himself, stalking up to where his hat is spinning around like a fan’s blades, and to where a young man is leaping up into the air and laughing.

Jakob stops and pauses for a while, taking in the sight.

“Sir! It’s coming towards you!”

Jakob whirls around, then turns back to where the hat is hurtling towards him like a frisbee.

“Duck!”

At the young man’s command, he folds downwards, avoiding the hat he had been trying to catch.

The hat crashes into the tree behind.

It settles up on the branch, displacing the robin, and hangs off a twig. It sways precariously, but the wind is no match for its balanced positioning.

The young man squints as he looks up. He looks worried, disappointed, and Jakob has to quickly speak up dismissively,

“What a shame.” A short sigh. “Oh well.”

The hat had been special, but there’s no need to upset the angel.

He goes back to his seat, but he doesn’t hear the rustle of grass to indicate the younger man’s leave.

“Sir?”

He’s expecting it, really.

“Yes?” he turns around to face him.

Crestfallen, he points towards his hat in the tree.

“Sorry I couldn’t save it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he shrugs. He turns around again, but he knows his words haven’t satisfied him, and that he’s still standing there. Jakob turns around.

The young man smiles wryly, “I could get it for you.”

Jakob tilts his head to the side, measuring him up. He’s definitely shorter than his Erik, who isn’t exactly six feet tall yet. He looks up at the trunk, easily above six feet in height. He raises his brows.

“Are you certain?”

The young man grins, “I know what you’re thinking. I’m going to need a boost, yes.”

Jakob chuckles again, stepping forward.

“That’s kind of you. But there’s really no need for you to get caught up in doing something dangerous over a silly hat.”

“It’s not a silly hat.” he insists. “And I’ve done worse stunts for more insignificant items. I just need your shoulder. Would that be alright?”

Jakob clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

But instead of what he’d meant to say, he remarks, “I’m old, but I’m not that old.”

“Just wanted to be careful,” the young man suddenly pipes up, his eyes widening towards Jakob as though trying to portray his innocence. “I’m sure you’re capable enough to get the hat yourself, sir, but this is entirely a fault of mine, so I’d prefer to hand it to you myself.” He smiles. “Now I’m going to need you to go like this…”

He demonstrates by interlocking his fingers and placing them low in the air, palms facing upwards, like a saddle of the hands. He replicates the gesture, then leans lower when the young man places a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“There we go,” he says, satisfied, although Jakob’s heart is speeding. If this little angel is to fall and get injured, he’ll take all the blame upon himself. He doesn’t want to see him get hurt over a hat. But Jakob has always been a believer and enabler of kind, selfless acts, so who is he to stop the young man from doing a good deed?

He kicks off his shoes and places a socked foot upon Jakob’s hands. The gentle hand of his on his shoulder gains weight, as he hoists himself up against the tree. He hangs onto a branch with one arm and places his foot against a smaller one protruding from the trunk. Swiftly, he grabs for the hat and props it atop his head. He smiles down at Jakob.

“You save that cheeky smile for later,” Jakob shouts, suddenly terrified. “Come down!”

“Step back, I’m going to jump!”

“No you are not, young man!”

“Step back, sir! I wouldn’t like to hurt you!”

Jakob rolls his eyes and steps towards the tree. It’s a six feet fall on hard ground, and he would really rather not see it happen. He stands deliberately in the young man’s landing space.

"Young man,” he bellows. “I’m going to try and catch you. Are you with me?”

“I don’t need catching,” he replies. “I’ll be fine.”

“There is no guarantee. Try and fall into my arms.”

“Alright, sir,” the boy laughs, “I’m quite convinced that you’re certainly not an old man, but I am not—”

“You, young man, are going to let go of that branch on the count of three. It’s either this or a piggyback. So come on.” He spreads his arms, positioning them in what would approximately make them directly under his body.

“But I’d much rather—”

“Fall and break a limb, god forbid, or give this old man a chance to show his strength?”

He hears a long sigh. The young man positions the hat on his head properly.

“Oh, when you put it like that…”

“I’m going to count now. Are you ready?”

“Are you?”

“Yes, are you?”

“No, but yes.”

“Do you trust me?”

The boy glances down. There’s a look of earnest openness. He nods.

“I do.”

“Good. Now I’m going to count to three, okay?” He waits for another nod. “One, two, three!”

The young man freefalls, landing straight into Jakob’s arms. His right arm cradles his back while his left falls under the young man’s knees. He’s a light catch.

A great catch.

A mesmerising catch.

Jakob looks away from the young man’s face, ashamed. He puts him down carefully, making sure his socked feet reach the ground before he removes his support. His heartbeat gains a manic pace, like its body had been the one to drop itself on reliance of an utter stranger.

This angelic young man really does trust him. What has he done to instill such a trust, he wonders. Nonetheless, the young man takes off the black fedora and props it up on Jakob’s head, stretching to rise on his tiptoes for an inch of advantage.

“Thank you,” he smiles placidly, clearing his throat. “Thank you very much.”

The young man bows a little, hair flopping with the wind.

“It was not a problem. Glad I could help.”

“Glad you almost made my heart stop?”

He ducks his head, grinning.

“I’m not proud of it…”

“Come on,” Jakob says, before leaning down to get the young man’s dispersed shoes. “Put your shoes on at the bench.”

They walk together, Jakob trailing mainly so he can see if the younger man is limping or not. His stride is clean, pressure on both feet is even, and the smile he gives Jakob over his shoulder is a sweet one.

They reclaim their earlier seats. Jakob brushes the small leaves and twigs off his hat while the young man puts his shoes back on. He studies his fedora, and swamped by the memories associated, he says,

“I’ve actually had this hat since my youth.”

The young man turns to him, wide eyed.

“See? So it isn’t a silly hat,” he says proudly.

“I suppose not,” Jakob sighs. “Not at all.”

“Well I’m all the more glad I could rescue it,” he beams, tying the laces of his shoes.

“It’s been through a lot.” The black fedora sits comfortably on his head, a memoir. “My wedding.” He looks down at his hands. “Edie’s funeral. My son Erik’s birth.”

“My condolences,” the young man whispers. He presses his lips together, looking down at his laced up shoes.

“Oh, quit it. Erik can be hard at times, but he’s not that bad.”

The young man stares at him for a moment, then bursts into a smile.

“No but truly. Erik is a great lad. I’m very lucky to have him.” Jakob looks away from the young man. “He’s just unlucky to have me.”

He immediately shuffles closer on the bench, placing a hand between them.

“Whatever would make you say that? You seem a lovely man.”

Jakob smiles, looking down at the hand that rests over the wooden planks. So much concern, such pleasant mannerisms, that Jakob is unable to resist speaking out to him about any and every truth he inquires after. This little sweet angel.

“I have never quite been an adequate enough parent to him, I believe. So caught up in making sure he doesn’t feel the loss of a mother, I’d forgotten how to be a father and a friend. And when I tried my hand at being both, I would lose myself. Get carried away. Irritate him.”

“Oh, _sir_ ,” the hand creeps closer, then moves back. “You have tried to be a mother _and_ a father to him all his life, am I not right?”

Jakob nods sorrowfully.

“Then you have done a job worth commending. You are an inspiring man. I’m sure your son appreciates you dearly.”

“He does,” Jakob says unevenly, chasing away a tear with a knuckle dabbed against his lashes. “Or so I hope…”

“He should.” The young man’s hand then, finally, migrates to Jakob’s shoulder. “You have done so much for him.”

“And he for me. Erik has cared for me unreservedly.” He pauses, thinking about the letter tucked in his pocket. “Especially while I was ill.” The young man smiles and says,

“Well you’ve obviously made a full recovery, haven’t you? You look fit as a fiddle, if I may say.”

Jakob laughs, adjusting his hat. “Oh, of course you may.” The young man grows a light blush on his round cheeks. He smiles widely, and the tiniest indents of dimples form on each cheek. Jakob looks away, certain that he’s not imagining the hand still settled on his shoulder. “In all honesty, though, I was terribly ill. Erik had a wonderful job he had to take temporary leave from in order to become my full-time carer.”

“How thoughtful of him,” the young man nods, eyes sincere.

“Indeed. It was his bad luck that when I got healthy, his employers wouldn’t take him back. Said his leave stretched for far too long and they replaced him.”

The young man takes in a shocked breath, eyebrows knitting together.

“That’s ridiculous! They can’t do that!”

And bless the little angel, for he genuinely looks scandalised by what had once happened to his Erik.

“But they did.” Jakob straightens his green tie. “And Erik never blames me for it. He—”

“ _Wait_ ,” the young man interjects. “You don’t really think _you're_ to blame, do you? It was hardly your fault that you became ill.”

He nods weakly, and turns to the younger man to trade a sad smile.

“I developed a cancer.”

The young man’s jaw drops. So much empathy in the angel, he thinks he might be drowning in it, revelling in it.

“You developed—oh good heavens, and is it all gone now?”

“Yes, it’s all gone now. If you’d peaked into the letter I dropped, you’d see that it’s a confirmation of my good health.”

“Oh,” the young man exhales, placing his hand on his chest as he breathes out. “That’s good to know. That’s very good to know.”

“It came and went rather suddenly. Erik was terrified, as you can imagine. But he’d been brave and kept his faith when I couldn’t.”

“Erik sounds like a very good son, and a strong man.”

“He certainly is. I would love for the two of you to meet.”

The young man smiles extravagantly.

“I would absolutely love to meet him.”

“He can be very temperamental, but deep down, he’s very soft. He wants to be a writer.”

“That’s incredible. I hope he gets to be.”

“I do to. I hope he gets everything he wants, and every little thing I couldn’t give him.” Jakob frowns morosely, weaving his fingers together at his lap. “Top of my list is to find him a wife. But he just seems to be pleased by nobody.”

“That’s a pity. He’s been taking care of you for so long. He deserves… someone to take care of him, don’t you think?”

“Exactly,” Jakob agrees.

“But then there’ll be nobody to take care of you.”

Jakob turns to glance at the young man. He brings a hand forward, hesitantly, and pats his round cheek for a brief moment.

“You’re such a sweet young man.” Jakob withdraws his hand and clenches it at his lap. “But I’m fifty-five. I’ve had my time being cared for, and now it’s time for Erik to step back and settle with a family of his own, and for me to let him go.”

“You’re absolutely right, but I doubt Erik will be willing to let go of _you_ unless you had somebody at your side,” he says pragmatically. “And fifty-five is not  _old_. At least you don’t seem to make it.”

Jakob covers his face with his hand.

“Oh, stop with the flattery. You’re making me blush.”

“Good!” the young man laughs. “Everyone deserves to blush once in a while.”

“I agree,” Jakob nods, “So tell me about yourself, mister, where are the hordes of your admirers?”

“ _Please_ ,” he rolls his eyes, a full circle of beguiling blue. “It’s hardly like that.”

“Well, I find that hard to believe. With a charming personality like yours?”

The young man blushes as he shrugs, and Jakob laughs aloud in victory.

“I’m being genuinely nosey now, so feel free to ignore; have you not found your one and only yet?”

“God, no,” the young man disclaims. “I’m only twenty-two. I’ll never find a ‘one and only’ at this age. I’m constantly surrounded by immature excuses for adults. They’re all self-involved and single-minded.”

Jakob arches a brow, staring at the young man in surprise and awe.

“Don’t get me wrong, I was very much the same at one point,” he continues. “Until I had this epiphany.”

Jakob turns in his seat to face the other man, leaning forward in interest.

“Go on. What was it like, what did you realise?”

“I…” the young man wrings his hands like it’s an old habit. “I quite liked attention, you could say. I enjoyed being in the center, having eyes on me. Having people focus on me, chase after me, pursue me. I loved that kind of toxic life just to escape from my home life, where I was always being neglected. Then one night, I was… I was very willingly being taken home by these two men I had never met before, who I’d just danced with at a club, and it occurred to me at the doorstep of their dorm, that… I don’t _want_ this life. I—I can’t do this to myself anymore. This isn’t what I want to waste my life doing.”

Jakob blinks at the young man, and the orange sunset behind his head. He urges for him to continue.

“So what is it that you want.”

“I want to be _special_  to someone. I want more than just a few hours of their hot attention, I want to be their everything. I want to fall in love and capture someone’s heart and trust them with mine. I don’t want to waste this life for myself. I want to do good for someone else. I want to have a _purpose_. I want to be… that—that _person_ you can’t live without. That person who satisfies you with everything from their body to their care to their _presence_.”

Jakob looks intently at the young man and the young man looks back. He has tears in his eyes, glistening, that drop one by one as the young man lowers his head. Silent, heavy tears fall from the worried little angel’s eyes and land on the wooden bench.

“Don’t cry,” Jakob whispers, voice thick. “Don’t cry, young man.”

He wonders, how can he comfort the youngster who has just bared the ambitions of his heart with such hopeless dejection? Other than reach for him with a hand on the shoulder of his blue jumper and stroke his thumb, gently, over its slope. With a fierceness, he wants to pull this young man against his chest and smother his tears with his dry hands, console him with promises.

But he cannot.

He is nothing to the young man, nobody to have that right.

He is solely a stranger.

One who he has trusted, even spoken his heart out to, but who is nothing more than a park-bench stranger.

And as much as that innocent face looks up at him, he doesn’t act upon his wishes. What could he, a widowed man suffering from mid-life crisis, tell the young man about patience and love? He hasn’t loved in years. He hasn’t known his heart’s desires in years. He does know, however, about the shattering heartbreak when the person you promise to love all your life leaves before you. He doesn’t want to tell this youngster that he should seek and find and then lose and weep. He wants to give him what he urges for on a silver platter and let it always be enough. He wants to drink his tears and shower him with words and gestures of reassurance.

He wants to save him from falling onto hard ground when he’s stubbornly clambered too high up to get down by himself.

He wants so much for the young man that it doesn’t even seem real.

It’s hard to notice the cold enveloping them, but the sky’s roar is difficult to ignore. They both look up, face the grey clouds, and look back down at each other.

The rain gushes down. Droplets douse the young man’s face, but he doesn’t make a move to remove himself from it. Jakob rises onto his feet, pulling on his coat.

“Come along,” he says tritely, gently patting the young man. The rain continues to drop down his face, trace his profile, and only until the third nudge does the young man stand up and follow Jakob under shelter. Both running and running out of choices, they head under a tree. They stand against the trunk, roofed by the plethora of leaves above them.

The young man has a flush on his cheeks. He swipes the sleeve of his jumper against his face, only to find it wet as well. He sighs before he looks up, watery eyes startling a little when he notices that Jakob is looking at him.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually, resting his head against the tree trunk. “I think I… I must’ve sounded so—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t apologise for having a clean heart with noble intentions.”

“I,” the young man lifts his head off the bark. “Really? Is that what you think?”

“Absolutely.”

“I suppose… when you put it like that, it makes me sound much better than I am.”

“You are much better than you think.”

The young man meets his gaze like it’s wonderful, wonderful to look into his eyes and watch the way they watch him back.

“I have only known you, sir, for a few hours.” The young man bites his lip before continuing. “And yet… and yet you have treated me like an adult. You’ve given me the kind of respect I’m always left to crave.”

Jakob’s hand rises, then falls. The young man, perhaps still bewildered by the weight of his own confession, spots the faltering of his hand.

He takes a step forward and reaches for Jakob’s hand again. He turns it over, then, and instead of placing it on his cheek, he places his face against his hand.

He’s stuck at a loss for words and breath. The young man shuts his eyes and leans into the touch of Jakob’s palm against his cheek, now awake enough to feel for the cold, soft skin and stroke along it with his calloused thumb. The young man he holds flutters, placing a hand over the back of Jakob’s and pressing down to intensify the touch.

This affection—it’s bold, so very bold, but Jakob can’t bring himself to withdraw.

The young man makes _him_ feel youthful again.

He can’t explain.

He can’t explain the fire in his heart, the tears that occupy his eyes. How could he, a man who has only loved one woman his entire life, look at this little angel of a young man and want to wrap him in his arms?

Is this his loveless, lackluster twenty-five years of celibacy speaking, or does he really _want_ —

“Call me Charles, please,” the young man says. His fingers are aligned over Jakob’s neatly. He smiles, beautifully, when Jakob’s other hand rests against the other cheek.

“Charles. May the colour of your smile always bloom upon your lips.”

The young man sucks in a breath, shutting his eyes, and suddenly goes boneless.

“Are you swooning?” Jakob asks, placing a hand on Charles’s back to prevent him from falling back. He only laughs and lets Jakob lift him back up onto his feet, and into his arms. Charles clutches him tightly, even squeezes him with all his power. And Jakob hugs him back and feels—

Young. Healthy. Alive.

\---

They walk back to the apartment when the rain stops. Jakob takes off his coat and places it over Charles’s shoulders. It only takes a few protests before he happily wears it, burrowing into it and smiling up at him.

On the way there’s a taxi stand, and Charles suddenly steps towards it.

“I’m going to be leaving now, I guess. But—”

“But? No but. I told you, you’re coming to meet Erik.”

“What if he’s not home?”

“He most likely is.”

And it’s true, he always is home, but when he reaches the apartment, it’s empty.

They sit on the sofa and wait.

Charles sits huddled inside his coat, smoothing his hair away from his forehead. He keeps tapping his foot, fumbling with his sleeves, biting his lip, all in turn.

“Would like something to drink, Charles?”

“No, thank you.”

They wait a while longer.

“I could come tomorrow? My next class isn’t until the day after.”

“Now that you’re here now… we should just wait.”

Charles taps his foot, fumbles with his sleeves, bites his lip. He looks away when Jakob looks at him.

They sit and wait more.

“Can’t you give him a call?”

“His phone is off.”

Charles nods distractedly, then suddenly he’s standing up and shucking off the jacket. He walks towards Jakob, who’s about to stop Charles from going on his way out, and only realises that he won’t be needing to when hands clutch his face and warm lips descend on his mouth.

\---

He didn’t think it would be this easy for it to feel this good.

With every layer Charles peels off—his jumper, his jeans, then his briefs, Jakob feels himself get further and further away from the moment.

Charles is beauty, angelic and refined, keen to kiss and eager to touch. Jakob is out of experience, white-haired, and no longer as flexible as he once was.

But Charles’s stamina and athleticism is uplifting, encouraging, _arousing_. He is dainty skin and a perfect mouth all over Jakob’s body, but also insatiable and pleasure-seeking to the greatest extent. He sits atop Jakob and rides him, lets the older man place his hands in and on every portion of his body he wants, and moans, calls his name, clenches his muscles, wets his skin, makes him come, until he is as a part of the blissful moment as Charles is a part of him.

He is naked and soft against him, panting for a steady heartbeat.

Jakob wishes he could always have this powerful, energetic pulse that thrums from his exertion. He wishes he doesn’t have to chase his breath and settle back into normalcy.

He wishes he had a better way to tell his son what he’s done without upsetting him too much.

It’s a thought swimming in Charles’s head too. After the flurry of post-coital kisses and tantalising adjustments of limbs for most efficient groping, once they’ve silently relaxed to rest, his soft voice comes,

“I really hope Erik likes me.”

“Me too, Charles. I hope he likes you too.”

  


	4. Chapter 4

_I’ve searched._

_I’ve searched for my place in your heart._

_But your heart isn’t even yours anymore._

\---

“Where are you going?”

Erik ignores him.

He continues to fill his suitcase.

“Erik, where are you going? Answer me please.”

Erik shuts his eyes. He says,

“I’m moving out.”

“What?! _No_!”

His organization crumbles. He starts to stuff his belongings in messily, not a care for creating creases. He marches to the restroom, collects everything in an armful, and dumps every item over the pile of his clothes. He goes to his bedside drawer. He scoops up his possessions and returns to his suitcase. The pile has mysteriously shortened. He sighs. He drops his things and goes back into the restroom, where his things are being stocked back. He takes each back by force.

Don’t go, he’s saying.

If only Erik loved him enough.

Oh well.

“Why are you leaving? Where will you go?! This is your home, Erik, you can’t—”

“I’ve found a place. Not far from here.”

Charles touches his arm. Erik goes limp. He lets the boy spin him around.

“Have you lost your mind? You’re going to leave your father?”

Erik smiles, slowly and bitterly.

“He has _you_ now.” He turns around, as though trying to escape from that truth. “I wouldn’t be leaving otherwise. But. He’s happy with you. He makes a point to remind me every single day.”

“He’s happy to have us both.” He’s spun around again. Charles is met with little resistance, as always. “He’d be shattered if you left.”

Erik folds his arms. He could argue with this boy for days. He could laugh, cry, shout, scream, but it would be satisfying. If it means Charles is listening.

“What about you?” he cocks his head. “You’d be bloody glad to see the back of me, wouldn’t you?”

Charles doesn’t mirror his smile, but Erik can see his eyes flit down to look at it.

“Since when did you start caring about _me_?”

\---

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Erik gets it now.

What is it with the fucking trees?

\---

He scoffs and turns back to his suitcase. Charles stops reaching for his things now. Erik thinks he’s won. Charles reaches for him instead.

“If you’re leaving because of me I’ll—”

“I’m not.”

Let go of me, he thinks. Let go of me and I’ll go.

“Your father has finally become strong again, and you’re going to go?”

“All the more reason for me to go.”

His one hand is capable enough to toss his clothes back into the suitcase. Charles didn’t get quite far with them.

The boy tightens his hand around Erik’s wrist.

Erik doesn’t struggle.

“If you leave him so will I.”

“You don’t get the point, do you,” he grits out, clenching his fist. “I’m leaving so you can stay.”

“You’re not leaving because if you do, I will too. And then he’ll have nobody. It’s either both of us, or none of us.”

“Why would you do that? Do you not care about him?”

“Do you?”

Erik tightens his fist, hoping Charles will hold on tighter.

\---

Like father, like son.

Like father like fucking son.

\---

He’s done now, mostly.

“I know you don’t mean that. I know you’ll stay here with him.”

There’s only his other drawer left.

It’s sheets and sheets and pages and pages of his heart.

“And I know you’ll stay here with him too, Erik.”

“I’m twenty-five. I have a job now. I’ve found myself a place. I want to be independent.”

“You think that’s what you want.”

“It’s exactly what I want. It’s the only thing I want that I can actually come close to having.”

A golden sticker for you, Charles, if you know.

“You’re going to leave your father, the one who devoted his entire life looking after you, to some indecent brat he met a month ago? Just so you can go and be independent?”

Erik smirks. The more this boy talks, the more his heart curls in on itself.

Why why why.

Why not me.

Why can’t you be my indecent brat.

Where do I find the seeds for this fucking tree.

Charles unhands him. He steps forward and empties out his suitcase.

“I want back all of my cigarettes that you’ve hidden. Then it’s a deal.”

The boy leaps into his arms.

Again, Erik thinks, as he swallows twice and begins to peel the boy off his skin.

\---

He stares at the wall.

He tries to hear for something.

Nothing.

He leaves his cigarette lit against the ashtray. Its odour streams out.

He reaches for the packed suitcase and puts his shoes on.

\---

A part of him wants to slip into his father’s room and take the old fedora with him.

That’s the same part of him that wants to see Charles for the last time.

Kiss his father’s brow as a farewell. A thank you. An inadequate way of saying well done, look at me.

I’ve finally learnt to accept that some things are meant for you, and some are meant for me.

All this trouble and look at the bloody good son I turned out to be.

I can’t make you happy.

I want to _have_ the one thing that makes you happy.

Aren’t I just the exemplar son?

\---

He hefts his suitcase up to his neck and silently walks past his father’s room.

The cigarette continues to fill the air.

\---

He hears a gasp.

He thinks it’s his.

The gasp is, but the reflection in the foyer mirror isn’t.

Startled, he loses his grip on the suitcase.

Charles is sitting on the kitchen countertop, looking consumed with anger. The dark shadows on his face help.

“I bloody knew it.”

Erik turns around. He uprights the suitcase and pulls its lever, all while staring at Charles in front of him.

“You know me well enough not to trust me,” he scoffs. What a pair they’d make.

If only he’d had the right to know.

He reaches for the door handle, but Charles is climbing off the counter and pushing past him. He shoves a key into the keyhole and turns it.

The boy hadn’t trusted him at all.

Good to know.

Then he’s hauling away his suitcase.

“Charles, stop, it’s too heavy for you,” he whispers hotly, as the boy also carries the suitcase instead of letting it roll noisily against the tiles.

“Fuck you, Erik,” he spits, as he drops the suitcase down on the floor in his room.

The boy is fuming.

Erik wants to laugh, because isn’t this exactly what Charles had been expecting? Expecting or preventing, either way, why is the boy surprised?

Then he starts to unpack his things.

Erik bolts to his room.

Sheets and sheets and pages and pages of his heart come unleashed as Charles opens his suitcase.

Every single word a litany of his love.

He had piled them at the top, and now they’re being tucked into the love interest’s hands.

Charles would have been a moment’s glance away from knowing—had Erik not tackled him to the floor.

“Don’t read,” it comes out strangled from the hollow of his throat, “please please _please_ don’t read…”

Even though the pages are scattered around them like a bed of leaves.

Even though the words _love_ and _want_ and _need_ and _Charles_ are surrounding him.

“Don’t,” he chokes, placing his hand over the boy’s eyes.

His other hand gets occupied with collecting every page and shuffling them under his bed and out of sight. He doesn’t know he’s panting until he’s leaning up to reach for the paper above Charles’s head and sees the way his breath makes the boy’s front hair jump. He tries to calm his breath, watching his hair as a way to check his progress, and swallows dryly. He keeps a hand pressed down on Charles’s eyes as he scours around for anymore remains of his heart lying around. Breathing a sigh of relief, he removes his hand and sits up.

He looks down towards Charles and sees his eyes squeezed shut. He eyes the pages shoved deep under his bed, concealed from view. He looks back to Charles, who has a bruise on his elbow he repeatedly rubs.

“May I open my eyes now?”

Erik runs a hand over his face.

“Yes.”

Charles blinks his eyes open to the dark room. Erik turns his head away when he sees Charles’s head move to face him.

“I didn’t—”

“Get out of my room.”

He hears Charles gasp. He rolls his eyes.

“Does that mean you’re going to stay?”

“You’ve locked the fucking door, haven’t you?”

Charles comes up on his knees and spreads his arms, despite his sore elbow, and bows forward to wrap himself around Erik.

But Erik says, “don’t,” making the boy flinch and drop his arms as he slinks away.

The boy doesn’t leave immediately.

The smoke has left its fragrance in the air.

“I could unpack for y—”

“I said get out, didn’t I?”

The boy says, “yes,” and stands up. He’s still in his jeans. Erik leans back on his hands and wonders what his life has become.

Since when did he hand his life over to this boy. Since when did he surrender.

“Good night,” he says, too quickly for Erik to retort, before disappearing from the room.

Too quickly for Erik to stop him.

\---

His father doesn’t know a thing.

Charles is propping a band-aid on his elbow when Erik walks into the kitchen.

He walks right back out.

He waits until he hears the sound of his father’s slippers against the tiles before he reenters. The man is grinning as he walks over to the boy and pulls him to his chest. Erik bolts right in.

“Hello, Dad.”

“Good morning, son.”

“Morning, Erik.”

Erik continues to look at the oatmeal in disinterest.

“I hate oatmeal,” he says. Charles’s face hangs.

He’d gotten the oatmeal.

“Erik, Charles just greeted you.”

“But I _hate_ oatmeal,” he groans, pretending he’d shed some maturity overnight. “Who the hell brought oatmeal?”

“I did,” Charles whispers, staring down at his hands. Jakob’s hand around him tightens. “I’m sorry.”

It’s no longer as satisfying as it used to be.

Still.

He goes to wash an apple at the sink.

They’re whispering behind him.

He turns the tap further.

“Erik,” his father says, as he bites into the apple. “You don’t have any plans today, do you?”

Erik shrugs, brushing past them. He stares agonizingly at the hand on Charles’s shoulder.

Long, lean fingers.

So much like his own.

Everyone always says, you look so much like your father.

“Well, I was thinking that the three of us could have a day out. We could go hiking. You love hiking, don’t you? And no oatmeal involved,” he chuckles. Charles doesn’t.

Erik doesn’t.

“I do like hiking, yes.”

“Great! We could—”

He turns around. Charles is smiling nervously at him.

“I only like hiking with you.”

Charles’s smile loses that last thread.

“But _Erik._ You’ve never tried going hiking with Charles, right? It could be fun; he has a lot of knowledge about the wilderness.”

“I don’t give a damn. Just us or I don’t go.”

He stares at Charles. Stares and stares and stares at him until he drops his shoulders, sets a tear free, and says,

“I won’t go then.”

\---

Nobody goes.

So much for all that fucking crying.

He’d thought nobody was listening, that indecent brat.

\---

“Erik we both know he’s sitting in my room crying. Stop pretending like you can’t hear.”

He puts down the hammer and nail.

“I can’t,” he shrugs.

He continues to do the odd jobs he suddenly felt compelled to do around the house. He looks around to see what would make the most noise. Should he drill a hole in the wall for fun?

“He’s crying, Erik. I know you can hear it.”

“Well, if I was his boyfriend I would go in and cheer him up. But. As circumstances have it, I am _not._ ”

“Erik you will go in there and make him stop within the next hour. Get my scarf.”

He goes and gets his father’s jacket and scarf from the coat hanger and helps him put on each.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going for my walk. And when I come back, I would really appreciate it if there was some peace in here.”

Peace.

No, there’s no peace for those who relieve their love with hate.

\---

He knocks twice before he lets himself in.

The boy is sitting on his father’s bed, knees up to his chin.

“Um,” Erik begins. “Good morning.”

Charles sniffs.

“It’s afternoon, Erik.”

“If these greetings change so frequently why does it matter if I didn’t say it at one point of the d—”

“It’s not that, Erik. It’s how you take this—this _great_ pleasure in demoralizing me every time you see me. Other than _that,_ you know… you’re insufferable.”

“Hm,” Erik says, sitting down on the bed beside the boy. “Is that all?”

“No, Erik.” The boy crosses his legs and shuffles closer to him on the bed. “This isn’t the point. I have no interest in listing off all the ways you’ve been a dickhead. I really don’t.”

When Erik doesn’t look at him, he proceeds to climb off the bed and kneel down in front of him. He moves his head so Erik will look at him.

Doesn’t he know that Erik sees him even when his eyes are shut?

“I want to make this work. I want to do whatever I can to make this work. _Tell_ me, Erik. What do I need to do? The love that I feel for your father is growing every single day. My desire to _stay_ here is growing every day. But I can’t help it if I’m not enough to keep your father happy.”

Erik watches the way Charles’s hands are itching to sit on his knees. Always wanting to touch, he is.

What a pair they could’ve made.

Always wanting to touch.

Always wanting to hold.

But.

Those small hands aren’t in his destiny.

“Give me a chance,” the boy says softly, hands now curling into the red bed sheets. “Just one opportunity to make it better between us. I’m just going to need your cooperation.”

Erik makes a move to stand up so that Charles will shift. Charles does, and Erik comes up on his feet to pace around.

“There—there will be… I have some conditions.”

“Yes! Anything, yes—”

“You need to stop crying so much. It makes Dad unnecessarily upset. He’s out there power walking like a madman as we speak.”

“Alright fine. Fair enough. Next time you upset me I’ll…”

Erik rolls his eyes.

“Should there be a next time, you will grow a backbone and tell me I’m being a dick. I don’t think you understand how much encouragement I get when I see you make that ugly crying face.”

Charles stays silent for a while.

Erik wants to laugh.

“Okay. I will.”

“If I wasn’t Jakob’s son, how many times would you have punched me by now?”

“A few.”

“So there. Also. No hugging.”

“Okay.”

“Another thing. I shouldn’t be able to see or hear or even _picture_ the two of you having sex. I swear to—”

“Sorry, s-sorry, won’t happen again. You won’t, I promise.”

Erik roots around for a cigarette. He finds one and ignores the sigh coming from behind him.

“Dad,” he says, placing the cigarette in his mouth, “really seems to like you. And I know your feelings for him,” he digs into his jeans’ pocket again for a lighter, “are honest. Unfortunately for me,” he sets a flame and lights his cigarette, “I will have to accept that.” He blows his smoke out the corner of his mouth. “Because I want the best for my Dad.”

He turns around, heart throbbing.

The boy is hiding his face in his shoulder.

“What now?” Erik nearly yells. “Why the fuck are you crying again? I thought I just—what did I tell you about that ugly crying face?”

He lets out a breathless sob. Erik pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I want to _hug_ you.”

Erik rolls his eyes. He takes another drag of smoke into his lungs before he tugs on the boy’s shirt.

His arms fold around Erik’s neck so quickly he nearly chokes. Charles had to have done this; their faces are so close Erik can feel Charles take in every breath he does, their cheeks and torsos pressed together. Erik struggles between wanting to shove Charles away and urging to sink his fingers into his skin and hair and wrap him tight enough to bruise and feel his pulse and mistake it for his own.

Instead he pats him with three fingers and shoulders out of his embrace.

“He’s so lucky to have a son like you,” Charles had whispered.

He pretends the words don’t make sense.

“I’m hungry,” he calls out from the door, like his hands aren’t trembling with the effort to keep in tears.

\---

Sacrifice.

Sacrifice makes you selfless.

Or does it just make you more and more unwilling to have anything worth wanting.

\---

Erik replaces the cake recipe in Charles’s hands with his textbook.

“You need to study,” he tells him firmly. “Dad said you have exams soon.”

The boy nods, clutching his book.

“I’ll cook,” he adds, just as his father comes through the door.

Jakob goes to his son first, clutching him by his jaw and pressing a kiss to his forehead.

“My beautiful son.”

Erik groans but smiles, feeling responsible for the warmth in his kiss.

Then his father goes to the boy, who sits primly in waiting with a book on his lap.

“My little angel,” he says, pressing his lips on his forehead for a kiss.

Erik looks away immediately.

\---

I get to have him for the whole dream, he thinks.

They don’t kiss, as though they already do enough of it.

Charles tucks himself next to Erik.

Erik tries to reach for Charles’s hand.

But.

He can’t.

\---

Erik rouses in the middle of the night.

His head is pounding.

The residue of his dream still casts images in his mind, reminding him of his suffocated struggle to come free of restraints.

Then he’d stopped trying, and now he has to deal with the consequences.

The throbbing makes his temples judder. He reaches for a cigarette but stops himself short. The glass on the table is empty.

He exits his room, bare-chested and hurting, and walks silently out to the lounge.

That boy is sitting at the dinner table, head down in a book. He doesn’t even notice Erik come in; he’s completely engrossed.

Erik thinks he’s going to be stealthy enough to enter the kitchen without notice, but Charles sees him the moment his shadow appears on the tiles. He glances up at him, alert.

“No suitcase, I swear,” he says, holding his palms up in the air. Charles’s expression doesn’t change.

“Are you alright?” he whispers, climbing out of his seat to follow Erik.

“You can go back and study,” he insists, inclining his head, though immediately regretting it when his head spins. He winces as he pours himself a glass of water. “I just have a headache.”

He tries to reach for the medical cabinet, but Charles is suddenly crowding him, up on his tiptoes to place a hand over Erik’s forehead. Erik immediately tenses.

“Headache?” he asks, cupping Erik’s skull.

“Yes,” he breathes. He can no longer keep his eyes open.

“How long for?”

“Just—I just woke up in the middle of the night and my head was hurting.”

He suddenly feels disassembled. He melts against the boy’s intimate touch.

“Gee, I really hope you’d stop smoking.”

Erik opens his eyes, scowling.

“This has nothing to do with smoking.”

The boy narrows his eyes.

“It’s your breath.”

Erik’s mouth shuts itself. He gazes down at the small curl of a smirk on Charles’s lips. His hand darts up, thumb stretching towards the boy’s mouth. His lips look stained with a dark smudge even in the dimly lit kitchen. Curious, he swipes the bud of his thumb against Charles’s bottom lip. The boy frowns. Erik repeats the motion, feeling the soft lip swell beneath his thumb and grow tender. Charles’s hand hovers around Erik’s wrist, but doesn’t remove his hand.

“What’s on your lips?”

“Nothing,” he says, his tongue momentarily flitting out and brushing against Erik’s thumb as he does so. He freezes. He slowly lets his hand drop. He looks away to the side, headache intensifying. Charles takes a step back from him and after a haphazard cough, he mutters to himself and goes to get some round white tablets out of the cabinet. Every corner of their house is so familiar to him, even in this dark. Erik takes the offered medication and swallows it down with the water he’d filled.

“Instant relief,” Charles reads out before he puts the packet away. “Any truth to that?”

Erik shakes his head and rubs his fingers into his forehead.

“Still hurts,” he says, leaning against the sink. “Don’t worry, go to sleep.”

“I wasn’t intending to sleep.”

“Go back to study then.”

“I could make you a cup of tea.”

“Forget it.”

It’s not that easy to dismiss the boy, he’s reminded, when he opens his eyes and sees him still standing opposite him. He slowly comes forward and cups Erik’s skull again, remembering, perhaps, how much Erik had liked it. He places his palm against Erik’s sweaty forehead and pushes down gently. Erik’s eyes shut again.

It’s no surprise his touch calms his heart.

He’s half leaning into it and half swaying backwards because of it. Charles cups his head with his other hand, and although it alleviates the pain, it makes him lose control over what Charles is holding so carefully.

“Feels good,” Erik says airily, mouth hanging open. He’s holding his breath anyway, now.

“Good,” the boy says, making the angle work for him despite of their height difference.

Erik swallows. “What have you done to me, Charles?”

“Hm? What have I done?”

Erik shrugs.

“Stupid boy.”

“ _Erik_. I’m giving you a head-rub and you’re—”

“Shh, don’t cry.”

“I’m not—oh god, you’re so patronising even when you’re drugged.”

Erik shrugs again.

“I’m sleepy.”

Charles hums and steers Erik towards his room. Erik lets himself be taken back, despite of wanting to mumble about the loss of Charles’s hands. Being sat down on his bed brings back a hazy memory. Charles tucks him back under the blanket so neatly he doesn’t even think to take note of the brush of his touch. His head is laid back on the pillow when the bed creaks with Charles’s weight. Cool hands descend on his head again and he contentedly lays still, smacking his lips.

“I was having a dream about you.”

Charles pauses for a second before continuing.

“Yes? And?”

“You were in my bed.”

“Oh…”

The touch pauses again before resuming, this time harder, with renewed pressure.

“I was under the covers and you were over them.”

“Okay.” There’s a relieved sigh.

“You have a dirty mind.”

The boy stays quiet.

“Anyway. I was trying to hold your hand.”

The boy remains quiet.

“Trying and trying and trying. And when I woke up.” He raises his eyebrows. “This.” He points to his temple.

The hands on his head become more desperate, press down deeper.

“Are you better now?” Charles asks lowly.

“Much.”

“I can leave you now?”

Erik chuckles in response.

“Will you be fine to sleep?”

“Yes,” Erik says with uncertainty.

He’s shocked to feel Charles’s hands curl around his for a short, sweet moment.

“There,” the boy whispers.

Erik bites his lip. He promises himself to wait until he leaves to cry.

“Thank you,” he chokes out.

“You’re quite welcome, Erik.”

The bed shifts as the boy stands up.  

But he knows he still hasn’t left. His head feels lighter, and with little concentration, he can still feel the boy’s palms on his skin. A dark shadow still captures him.

“You know what I think, Erik?” Charles whispers.

“What?”

“I think you’re starting to like me.”

Erik bites his lip hard.

The shadow of his figure still looms over him.

“I think it was the oatmeal that did it for me,” he says, strained.

The boy chortles, then bows down, and places a kiss on Erik’s forehead.

He doesn’t see the way Erik’s hand jumps forward for his t-shirt.

“Good night, Erik.”

He breathes in sharply, but doesn’t say it back.

Charles expects that much, because he leaves quickly after, shutting the door behind him.

“Stupid boy,” Erik says to his empty room. 


	5. Chapter 5

Twenty minutes later, Erik is glaring at the boy with confusion and lust and unadulterated fury.

But he has no words.

\---

“I want to move out,” he’d said to his father, as they sat in front of the television, the news anchor nearly inaudible. Jakob’s head was tipping, about to doze off. He’d jerked to full wakefulness at Erik’s words.

Erik had held his breath.

“Really?” he’d said, eyes wide. His hand came up to rest on Erik’s shoulder.

“Yes. I’ve thought about it. I’ve even met with a landlord for a one-bedroom flat across the street. He said I can move in within this month.” He’d turned to face his father better. “I think it’s time I did.”

His father’s face had been overcome with a series of emotions; he’d set his features impassively, then gave in to a small smile, a frown, then a stern look of pride.

Erik had released his breath.

“I fully support your decision.”

It was bittersweet.

“I thought—”

Or perhaps what he didn’t think, was that it would be quite so simple for his father to agree. To let him go.

When Charles came through the door, he had stopped to stare at them both. He’d smiled at Jakob beautifully before glancing towards Erik for a long, aching moment. Jakob had summoned him, breaking their gaze apart, and Erik watched as the boy dropped his satchel and spilled into Jakob’s lap.

He’d asked him how his exam went.

His reply was a giggle and a kiss.

Erik mused over whether he should ask, too.

He’d excused himself and loped to his room. Halfway through packing for the third time he’d heard the boy shout.

He had to light a cigarette for this.

The smoke curled around his neck as he walked towards the door.

“He’s moving out?!”

“Yes, Charles, he asked to move out.”

Erik walked in further to see Charles stalking up and down the lounge, hands fisted at his sides.

“What’s wrong?” Erik had asked, slightly amused.

Charles marched up to him, chin raised.

“You asked to move out? You’re going to leave your father and move out?”

Erik glanced at his father before placing the cigarette in his mouth again. He raised a brow.

“How can you? How can you do that to him?”

Jakob was slowly standing up now, advancing towards Charles as though he was a bomb to be detonated. His skin was drawn tight, his lips thinned, and there was no mistaking the rigidness of his posture, as though he was prepared to strike.

“Charles, what are you talking about? What would Erik be…? I’m not quite sure I understand what’s there to be so upset about, my angel.”

The boy turned to him.

“Erik wants to _leave_ you. He wants to go and live away from his own father, despite all you have done for him—how can you not understand how wrong that is?”

Erik’s jaw dropped.

“Charles,” Jakob uttered, running a hand over his hair. “I’m allowing Erik to leave. In fact, he has every right to leave whenever he wants.”

“Erik cannot just—” Charles stopped. He took Jakob’s hand away from his head. He turned to look at Erik, then shut his eyes, a brow arched. “What did you say?”

“I’m more than happy for Erik to do what he wishes. Now that I am recovered, and have you with me, and Erik has become financially able to afford his own house with the job he’s secured, I am more than happy to let him live on his own. He is old enough, certainly responsible enough, and besides—it’s not like he’ll be getting rid of his father so easily.”

Erik took the unbalanced cigarette out of his mouth. He’d meant to return his father’s smile, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the boy.

He looked pained.

His mouth opened, twitched, then fell shut.

“I didn’t realise you… that you were suddenly okay with this,” the boy had murmured quietly.

“When did I ever imply I wasn’t?”

And those words hit Erik hard.

Jakob droned on about his happiness for Erik to settle on his own, eventually build a family—to not forget making a spare key for himself and setting aside two days of the week for a visit—

But Erik hadn’t registered a word.

He stared at the boy, who was staring back.

He mouthed his name, but his lips barely moved.

It was taking its time to dwell on him.

Charles had run a hand over his chest and charged towards the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of water and drank thirstily, then another time, until he was out of breath. He brought his sleeve over his knuckles and wiped his mouth, catching Erik stare at him while he was halfway through the motion.

Erik could tell he didn’t look the least bit friendly.

He had no words. He was speechless.

\---

_Moving Out Because Your Emotions Are The Air You Can’t Breathe: Based On A Very True, Very Aggravating Story._

\---

Erik tears up the sheets and sheets and pages and pages of his heart into tiny shreds before burning them.

What an indecent brat he had to fall in love with.

\---

Jakob comes into his room before dinner and sets down a box of things he wants Erik to take. Erik packs each as they reminisce about the memories tied to that lamp, those boots, this elegant wall clock. 

It’s pleasant to pause and recall, but he feels unease in his chest every time he thinks of the memories they’ll be parting with.

He sees Charles for dinner, then. He’s preparing for his last exam, he’s informed.

Erik glares at the top of his head, but it remains down over his book of notes. Under the table, he’s clicking the top of his pen over and over and again and again. Erik grits his teeth at the noise and doesn’t protest when Jakob offers to serve dinner. He sits in the chair next to Charles’s, slips his hand under the table, and rips the pen out of his hand.

“We need to talk,” he hisses.

He throws the pen down on the table.

Charles still doesn’t meet his gaze.

His hand is trembling as he retrieves his pen.

He doesn’t click it again.

Jakob smiles when he sees them sitting together and goes to sit on Charles’s other side. He ignores Charles’s moan when he closes his books and replaces them with food.

Just five minutes into the meal, it’s clear that everyone has lost their appetite.

Erik watches the boy closely.

He chews slowly.

His morsels are tiny.

Every time his father begins to speak, he sets his spoon down and turns to him fully. Laughs at his joke, strokes his hand, smiles at his anecdotes.

Dinner is, to say the least, painstaking.

\---

Erik washes the dishes after the meal, glancing at Charles every other second. He can tell Charles is tiring. His handwriting has become lethargic scribbles, his eyes drooping as he reads. Erik catches himself being watched by those blue eyes, but he’s never the first to look away.

Erik is finished by the time Charles has declared he’s had enough. The boy determinedly ambles over to Jakob and straddles his lap, taking his pen and diary out of his hands as he shuffles closer to the older man.

Erik’s words don’t make it out.

“Kiss me,” the boy demands against Jakob’s lips, before he tilts his head and dives for one, heedless. The two engage in a heated, passionate snog, oblivious to the third person in the room.

How unclear had his request been?

He would be leaving in the morning, before work, and—

 _Deliberately_ , Charles is—

If he could pull their tongues apart, he would, but here is Charles doing his utter best to delay their talk.

Erik remembers where he’d hidden his father’s vodka, all of a sudden.

He meanders to the cupboard and unearths it, popping the top off easily before taking a deep swallow. His eyes don’t leave the boy’s hips as he slides them forward on the older man’s lap, his thighs parted widely and his arse spread out.

Erik doesn’t mean to be looking. Really.

Still.

He quivers and takes another swallow.

Charles ends their kiss to speak into Jakob’s ear, and there’s no mistaking the way his lips meet twice to whisper, take me to bed.

Erik may as well be wallpaper.

He heads for his room, with little need to be discrete.

He kicks the door shut.

He pours the drink down his throat.

He burns and burns and burns.

\---

An hour passes by.

It goes completely quiet.

His bedroom is empty, but for the suitcase and smoke and ashes of his heart.

His cigarette finishes and he lights a new one, fumbling. He thanks the vodka for showing him the way. He sips its last drops until he can balance the bottle vertically from his mouth.

He stumbles out of bed, pursing his lips to keep his cigarette from falling, and makes his way over to the bedroom opposite.

The tiles are cool under his feet.

He swings the door open and removes the cigarette from his mouth. He doesn’t exhale.

It’s dark, but he can make out which side the boy is sleeping on.

He quietly pads over and reaches down to pat the boy’s arm. There’s no immediate response, so he lightly slaps the boy’s cheek with his fingers.

Charles stirs, lashes fluttering. Erik slaps him again. The boy frowns.

“Charles,” he whispers, now tugging the boy’s arm. “Get up.”

His eyes slowly open, in an elegant, sweeping motion—because god forbid Erik find anything the boy does unattractive—and he blinks up at Erik as he looms over him in the dark.

“Get up.”

The boy’s frown deepens, lips curving.

“What?” he rasps.

“Get up.” He accentuates the order with a tug at his arm.

The boy turns to look at Jakob, who’s still asleep. He grumbles and turns back into the bed, yawning as he says, “in the morning.”

“No,” Erik says, because he knows exactly what Charles is doing. “Get up. Now.”

He tugs on the boy’s forearm again as he leans down, this time yanking at his other wrist as well. The boy lets out a groan of annoyance, fighting to keep his limbs. Erik bends to press his mouth against the boy’s ear. Raged, he says, “Stop fucking pretending and get up.”

He lets go of the boy’s arms harshly, then takes a step towards the door. Charles is now sitting up, a hand pressed over his face.

Fucking indecent brat.

“Hurry up,” Erik hisses, making a move to push the covers down from his side.

“I’m _naked_!” he gasps, pulling the covers up.

Erik snarls, heart racing, and turns away.

There’s a sick joke in here somewhere.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he grits out, before realising he’s dropped his cigarette somewhere. He finds a tiny orange flame at Charles’s feet and reaches for it, standing up to find himself facing the boy. His eyes are ablaze. Erik grinds his jaw and tugs the boy by his wrist again. He stops Erik once to scoop up his briefs before letting himself be dragged out of the room.

Out in the hall, Erik pushes him against the wall. He shuts the bedroom door behind him as he waits for Charles to step into his briefs. He’s stuck between wanting to glance and wanting to give him privacy, but before he can make the decision, Charles has covered himself up.

Erik breathes out, swallows, then crushes the cigarette in his fist. He turns to face the boy evenly.

“You know what you are?”

He doesn’t even give it much thought.

“An indecent brat.”

“Precisely.”

His head lolls to his shoulder.

“You woke me up to tell me _that_?”

Erik scoffs.

“That was me checking you’re not bullshitting again.”

Charles rolls his head back.

“What is it you’re trying to do to me, huh? Why did you lie and beg and practically—fucking _force_ me to stay? You said—you said Dad would be _shattered_ if I left. Correct me if I’m wrong, but _you’d_ be fucking shattered if I left.”

The boy stares at him blankly; expressionless.

“Why did you stay up that night with a key to the door? Why did you fucking go on your knees and make compromises? Why have you been feeding me lies and making me feel guilty about going? Why?”

Charles shakes his head once, then parts his lips to speak, but Erik quickly interrupts him.

“I’ll tell you why.”

The boy arches a brow.

“You,” he points a finger at the boy’s chest, a hair’s breadth away from touching his skin. “You want me to stay in this house and suffer.”

Charles reaches for his hand and brings it down.

“Erik, you are completely and _utterly_ drunk, please just calm—”

“No. Stop fucking with me. _Stop_ it. Do you have any idea how crazy you drive me?”

Charles turns his head to the side. _It’s your breath_ , he remembers. He pounds the wall.

“I can’t stand the sight of you. And you want me to stay in this fucking house with you? You want me to suffer, don’t you?”

“For the love of _god_ , Erik, I was honestly starting to think you and I were getting along!”

“Fuck you. You think we’ve been getting along? All you’ve ever done is make me feel horrible. You’ve done everything I couldn’t and—and you’re still,” he pauses, gasping for breath, his nose almost pressing against the boy’s forehead, “you’re still everything I… everything I—”

“ _Erik._ ”

The boy touches Erik’s face, but he slaps him away.

“Listen to me now.”

“No—you’re a fucking liar.”

He holds his head in his hand, grimacing.

“Erik, I’m sorry that I’ve made you feel horrible. I truly am.”

Erik shakes his head, wanting to speak, wanting to fall, wanting to cover this boy’s mouth until neither of them could think—

“I have no intention of making you suffer. I _care_ about you immensely. I simply… misconstrued what Jakob wanted. I know how it feels when—”

“No you fucking do not—”

“ _Listen_ to me. When my mother remarried I couldn’t stand the man either.”

Erik eyes him.

“She said it was okay for me to move out, so I did. And then she regretted it. I just didn’t want to see Jakob regret this decision as well, so I—”

“You practically made the decision _for_ him!”

“I just—I’m sorry, I—”                                                                                             

“How can you just _assume_ he’ll regret it?”

“You can’t blame me for wanting to keep Jakob happy.”

“What about what _I_ want? Ever since you’ve been in this house I’ve wanted to move out. But _I’d_ be doing the awful thing if I left, right? Damn you, Charles. You just want me to stay here so you can watch my heart break.”

The moment he says it, he feels almost completely sobered.

He swallows around the lump in his throat. He clenches his fist tighter.

The first thing he feels is the boy’s hand around his arm, just as his body turns to leave.

“Erik?”

“Let go of me.”

“What do you mean—”

“No, no.” He slaps a hand over his forehead. “I’m done. I’m done, I’m going.”

He turns around again, head spinning.

Charles’s hand loosens slowly and slightly.

“I’m sorry if I’ve done anything to make you feel horrible.”

“Let go of me.”

“I just want you to know that you have every right to hate me, so go ahead.”

“Let go.”

“But please don’t avoid seeing your father because of me, I would hate that.”

“I won’t. Now let go.”

“And if you ever want to talk or rant or need something, I’ll be waiting for you.”

“Let go, now, please.”

“But your father is in safe hands, always.”

“Okay. Okay, thank you, but if you would please—”

“And Erik? No matter how many awful things you call me or how many times you hurt me, I’ll always see the good in you. Always.”

He raises his voice.

“Let _go_ of me!”

But when he whips round, he sees the boy still standing against the wall, hands by his side. Erik looks down at his arm, dumbly, to find nothing, nobody holding it. He looks up at Charles again, eyes narrowing.

His knees buckle, unable to stay upright, and he clasps his head with both hands as though trying to compress his skull.

“What have you _done_ to me?”

It’s a big favour for him from his body, perhaps, that he falls to the floor and passes out.

\---

Have I gone insane yet, he thinks.

Should I just stop trying now, he thinks.

\---

He wakes up, head buzzing erratically, and after one swallow of the taste in his mouth, he almost wants to collapse again.

It’s another thing that his head is atop something softer and fleshier than a pillow.

He turns his head and burrows his nose down, groaning, then inhaling deeply at the smell of clean cotton and soap. The pillow jerks when he presses his cheek flat against its smoother side, only belatedly realising that he’s awoken it, and that _it_ is freckled skin.

“Erik? Are you awake?”

He mumbles incoherent sounds in reply to the soft voice. He feels his head being lifted, and he immediately drops it back down, unwilling to sit up.

“C’mon Erik, you’re heavy.”

He blinks, confused. Subtly, he runs the tip of his nose over the surface beneath him.

It’s his thighs.

“Charles…  am I on you?”

He wonders if the boy can even understand his slur.

“Yes,” he hears a whisper above him. “You passed out and hit your head.”

He’s reminded.

“You were drunk,” he informs.

Erik perceives the silence as his cue to move off.

He doesn’t.

“And?”

“You dragged me out of bed.”

It vaguely sounds like Erik’s doing.

“And then?”

“We argued for a while.”

Erik stirs on the boy’s lap, still unwilling to remove himself.

He turns his head slightly.

“Who won?”

He hears a low, throaty laugh.

“You did, Erik.”

He smiles and turns his head back into the boy’s skin.

“How. Tell me.”

“Because… you were right to say I was being horrible to you. I didn’t think about how you feel about staying here. I was simply thinking about Jakob’s needs and my own wishes. Of course you have the right to leave. I’m deeply sorry.”

Erik sighs.

“Hm.”

He nuzzles closer to the tender, smooth skin of the boy’s thigh.

This is wonderful, he thinks.

This is what he should always wake up to, every morning.

This is where he finds a calm for his throbbing injury, his broken heart.

“Erik. You should really get up now.”

This is everything wrong with his life.

“No.”

He flings an arm over the boy’s legs to keep him pinned down, then makes himself comfortable across his lap.

He’s tired, beat, unhappy.

He just wants this.

“Erik, _please._ I have class… you have work… Jakob’s about to get up.”

The bitter taste in his mouth gets worse.

“I have a headache,” he tries.

“You have a hangover.”

“Yes, that.”

The boy sighs.

Fuck. The indecent brat.

And his soft thighs.

“Instant relief? I could go get you some, if you’d—”

He keeps the boy pinned down with his arm.

“What did you mean when you said, I was simply thinking about my own wishes? What wishes?”

The boy goes quiet.

“I want you to stay, Erik.”

But.

“Why?”

He turns around to face the boy and realises he has to look up the boy’s naked chest in order to meet his eyes.

“I think I’ve made you cry ten times.”

“Never mind that, Erik. I told you last night, that I see good in you. Deny it all you want, but I think we could’ve been great friends.”

He says it with all this sweet optimism and hope, not realising, perhaps, that Erik is stung.

Great friends, he thinks.

Great friends, and what a pair they’d make.

Slowly, he retracts his arm, and places his palm flat against the tiles as he hoists himself up.

“Should get up,” he mutters.

Now he has to peel himself off of the boy’s skin.

It feels like tearing off his own.

He grimaces from the pain.

“Feel like shit,” he grits out, trying to support himself up.

Charles is watching him. He slowly pulls his knees up to his chest, forearms against the thighs he was cradled on.

“You slammed your head down pretty hard. There’s no bleeding, I checked. Just a little bump.”

Erik reaches for the back of his head and locates the swell easily, rubbing his fingers over it.

He stumbles to his feet, swaying, and feels bile rise.

It’s still dark out, he’s relieved to know.

Charles juts a hand out towards him.

“Help me up.”

Erik takes a step forward on the cold tiles and grasps for the boy’s hand. He doesn’t pull.

Blue eyes gaze up at him patiently.

He shakes Erik's hand a little.

Relenting, he pulls the boy up from their joined hands until he’s up on his feet.

Charles brings himself up to his full height.

This boy’s affection is going to ruin him.

Indecent brat.

Charles pulls away first.

“I should go,” he says, pointing to the bedroom door. “He’ll wonder where I’ve…”

Erik runs a hand over his face.

He begins to turn away, taking pity on his eyes, when he hears the boy say, “I’m sorry about everything.”

Erik shrugs.

“I wish you didn’t have to leave.”

He clenches his fist, feels his skin still burning.

“But I’m happy for you.”

He nods.

“Will you miss making me cry?”

He turns around.

The boy is crying.

Erik takes the first step forward, but Charles closes the distance between them.

He wraps his arms around Erik’s waist, head against his chest.

“You’ve,” he takes a deep breath, tries again, “you’ve just broken two rules.”

He rests his chin over the boy’s head, hands snaking up to rest on the small of his back.

“Doesn’t fucking matter now, does it? You’re leaving.”

Erik’s t-shirt soaks up the boy’s tears as he cries, which slowly, dissolve into chortles of laughter.

“I’m going to miss you.”

He holds him tighter.

“Take care of my Dad.”

The boy nods his head vigorously.

“I think I’ll miss you a little, you… you—”

He lifts his head, eyes impossibly wide as he stares up at Erik.

“Indecent brat?”

Erik chuckles.

“Angel, Charles. Angel.”

\---

A shower, white tablets, and two attempts at hurling later, he’s dragging his suitcase out in the rain.

He walks across to his new apartment and dumps his bags in. It’s empty, all corners and walls and wide spaces, and immediately he wants to retreat.

He takes his work briefcase and heads to work, early.

Much too early, he realises.

He reaches for his phone, wipes away the raindrops settled on its screen, and goes to stand inside a phone booth.

He dials for Emma.

She picks up after eight rings, but Erik forgoes any greetings.

“Emma,” he chokes, crying, “Emma I’m in love with him. I’m so gone, Emma. Help me. _Please._ Help me.”


	6. Chapter 6

“That bad, huh?”

He looks up at the ceiling.

“Worse.”

He hears Emma shift in her seat.

“It’s only been one month, Erik.” She sounds absurdly soft. “And you were crying down the phone.”

“Do you remember that time in college, when you told me you and I were alike because of our hearts?”

She hums wistfully.

“You said that we will always be the ones with our iron hearts on our sleeves.”

“Erik…”

“I don’t want this for myself.”

“I know,” she sighs.

“I wish I could know how it feels to leave my father happy without knowing that stupid boy.”

“You’re not going to sit here and mope, are you?”

He raises a hand in her direction.

“Just… just let me, alright? I need to.”

She falls back on the couch.

Erik slumps further into his seat.

“I just want _him._ Just him.” His head rolls from side to side as though it’s too heavy to bear. “I don’t want anyone else. I want _him_ , Emma.” He places his hand over his chest, palm over his heart. “I don’t want to hold someone whose body doesn’t feel like his. I don’t want to smell anyone who doesn’t have that… that soapy-rosy scent on their skin the way he always does. I don’t want to open my eyes and see that the person in my arms isn’t him. Smiling up at me.” His eyes feel wet. He curses, dragging his teeth over his bottom lip. “Fuck, Emma, I want nothing that isn’t him. _Nothing_.”

Emma is holding her head in her hands.

She looks irritated.

“I don’t know how to deal with this, Erik.”

“I know,” he sighs. “I know you don’t.”

“I was _going_ to say, find someone else, but I’m guessing that’s not an option, is it?”

“Never.”

She tips her head forehead as though deeply fixed in concentration.

“Forget the damn boy.” It’s obvious, really, how little faith she has in her own advice. “Forget him. Wipe him from your mind. Or we could try aversion therapy?”

“Emma he’s my father’s boyfriend.”

Fuck. He really is.

“Fuck.”

“You can say that again,” she murmurs.

“ _Fuck._ ”

“Amen.”

“I’m in love with my father’s boyfriend.”

Emma looks at him with the same disappointment he feels for himself.

“And to think that not long ago; we were both equally heartless.”

Erik shrugs.

“You grow one when you’re around that boy.”

Fuck.

“I _miss_ him now.”

He stands up from his seat and makes his way towards the front door.

“It’s been three nights!” she says, leaping up to her feet and catching up to him. “Don’t do this to yourself.”

Erik puts his hands on the door as Emma stands shielding the handle.

He makes a face that must exemplify his self-pity, because Emma actually winces.

“I know I shouldn’t. But I _want_ to.”

“You need to overcome this, Erik. Charles isn’t…” she takes a deep breath, glancing at Erik resolutely, “Charles isn’t yours.”

“I _know._ ” He slams his hand against the wood of the door. “I’m not deluded. I don’t want to turn up and confess or—I mean I _know_ I can’t have him. But there’s something inside me that I need to sate.” He rests his forehead against the door. “I want to _annoy_ him again. I want to make him cry, complain. I want to make him laugh. I want him to smile because of me. I want him to silently listen to something I’m saying, just…”

Emma nods her head, though she looks troubled.

“This is ghastly,” she says, sympathetic.

Really, it’s more sympathetic than she’s ever been.

Erik can’t believe what he’s doing to her.

“I’m turning you into a human,” he whispers, eyes shut.

“Which is why I’m _begging_ you, please do something about your—”

His phone begins to ring.

He groans.

“Excuse me,” he says sarcastically, as he plunges into his pocket for his avidly buzzing phone. Emma raises a brow at him suspiciously before leaving to go refill his drink.

“Not too much, you know how I get,” he tells her as he glances down at his caller ID.

It’s Charles.

“It’s Charles.”

Emma’s heels stop clicking.

“Don’t pick up.”

“But,” he swallows, staring down at his screen like it’s divine. “He’s calling me. He wants something from me. If I don’t pick up, he’ll worry. He’ll think I don’t want to talk to him. I _do_ want to talk to him.”

He presses the green button.

Emma strides back into view, looking defeated.

He doesn’t feel apologetic, not at all—not when he hears Charles say, “Hello?”

“Hi, sorry, hi.”

“Hi, Erik,” he breathes. “How are you?”

He actually aches.

“Fine,” he says.

“Good. I’m glad.”  
Emma is watching him firmly.

“Are you busy tonight?”

Erik looks up at the ceiling, eyes rolling to the back of his head.

“God, no.”

“Oh, great! Actually, the thing is, my exams finished today, so… I was hoping to go out and have some drinks. Responsibly. Jakob’s not up for it, but, um. Would you be?”

Erik clutches the phone, palms sweaty.

He looks up at Emma.

“Hold on just a sec.”

He’s already removing the phone from his ear when he hears the boy loudly say, “Sure!”

He wants to laugh.

“He wants to go out for drinks.”

“Say no.”

He nods.

“Yes,” he replies.

“Excellent! It’s the one outside of my University campus.”

Erik knows exactly which one.

“I’ll be at the back,” he adds.

“Got it.” He eyes Emma diffidently. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Goodbye then, Erik.”

He holds onto the phone with both hands.

“Bye.” He takes the phone away from his ear. “ _Fuck_.”

“I heard that.”

He scrambles for the phone again.

“Sorry I—hurt myself.”

Emma squints at him.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he says airily. “I’m okay. I’ll see you.”

He puts the phone down.

He lets out a long sigh.

He turns to look at Emma.

“Well.” He scratches his head haphazardly. “Thanks for all your help.”

Then, promptly, he dashes out through the door and heads for his car.

\---

_If you were mine._

_If you were mine I would make love to you again and again and again until every part of you reeked of me. Until your body was more familiar to you only when I was touching it, kissing it, worshiping it. Until I would know my body better when it was mingled with yours, and we were moving together, laughing at how much we depend on each other, weeping at ourselves when we would be apart._

_If you were mine._

\---

He knows it’s going to go badly.

Alcohol and unrequited love isn't the combination that promises to end well.

But.

It doesn’t stop him.

He pulls up at the lot and practically bolts into the club to match the pace his heart is setting.

It’s a lot to keep up with.

The club’s heat is consistent and prickly as he makes his way through the throngs of drunkards and dancers and drunk dancers. He wishes he’d left his coat in the car.

Charles is sitting in the reserved seats at the back, looking cautiously over his drink as he sips from the straw that hangs off its rim.

The sight makes his heart stutter.

Charles looks up at him, brightening.

The last time Erik had seen Charles in this exact environment, he’d been writhing against two other bodies.

Now, the boy is in a committed relationship with his father.

His _father._

And is innocently sitting alone at the back, waiting for him.

Erik can honestly sweep his gaze around the entire club and say that the most beautiful person in the building is the one getting out of his seat to greet him.

“So glad you could make it,” he grins, stepping forward for a hug that—after a moment of flickering realisation on Charles’s part—devolves into a brief pat on his back.

Erik tries not to look disappointed.

Still.

“How was your exam?” he says, fanning himself with his collar. “How’s Dad?”

“Great, both,” he nods, running his hands up and down his hips. “He wants you to text him when you get here.”

“Alright,” he says, digging his phone out. “Want another drink?” he tips his head towards his empty glass.

“Absolutely. Rum and coke.”

Erik raises a brow.

“Responsibly, didn’t I say?” Charles adds, lips quirking.

Erik has nothing more to add. His cheeks begin to heat up. He fans himself more furiously.

“I’ll be back,” he says, glancing down at his phone as he turns away to head for the bar. He looks back over his shoulder once to see that Charles is sliding back into the booth, eyes still on him.

He smiles, and Charles smiles back sweetly, raising a hand to wave.

Erik smiles even more, and not seeing where he’s going, nearly trips over a broken glass on the floor. He still turns around and lifts his hand though, unwilling to turn his gaze away from the boy. Charles smiles shyly at him, then looks away at something else that catches his attention. Erik tears his gaze away from him and forces himself to head towards the bar. He leans an elbow against the counter and waits for the bartender. He fights the urge to turn around and glance at Charles again, seek out his face and smile at it until he evokes a response. A smile back, a gorgeous laugh—how pathetic he is, gazing at him every other breathing second, maybe he’ll roll his eyes and follow Erik to the bar and quicken their order. It’s only been three nights, he reminds himself.

He sighs and presses a message for his father on his cell,

_Charles and I are in the club now. Drinking responsibly._

_Worry not, father dearest._

He tucks his phone away and gives a tight-lipped smile to the bartender who comes gaiting towards him, hands behind his back. He orders himself a dry martini and can’t help the amusement as he asks for a straw along with Charles’s rum and coke. He swirls the thin plastic in the bubbly liquid and mutters his thanks as he places the payment down and takes their drinks back. He gazes up to find Charles, who’s still sitting in his seat, hands tucked between his legs.

Erik moves his head to get his attention, but the boy’s gaze is focused on the two men standing above him. One of them is holding out a drink, a straw hanging off the rim like they know, like they’ve been watching—

Erik glances down at the drink in his own hand.

The men standing above Charles leer down at him; the one nearest holds out the drink like an offering. Charles glances down at the drink and slowly, nervously, takes it. He sets it down on the table and turns it around so the straw faces him. He looks up at the men who still haven’t left. Erik finds his feet again, unable to help how he feels slightly redundant for bringing Charles what looks like the very same drink. Still he goes on, making his way through the crowd.

Charles is wringing his hands under the table, and Erik knows exactly what that gesture means. He looks up at Erik with blinding relief.

The pleasure is all Erik’s.

He glares at the men who stand in his way.

“Excuse me,” he tries being polite, inclining his head to indicate that this is his space, his seat, his beautiful—

 _Charles isn’t yours_ , Emma had said, harsh. He swallows.

“You’re in the way,” he says, louder. One of the men is holding his own drink, ogling Erik curiously. The one nearest to Charles hasn’t looked away from the boy yet.

“It was… nice catching up with you,” Charles is now nodding, tone conclusive. Erik doesn’t know if he should be glad Charles knows these men.

“And you,” the close one says, smiling enthusiastically. He shifts his posture. “It’s been so long since I last saw you around…”

He turns to look at Erik. His companion nudges him in the elbow.

“Hello,” he says, turning his attention to him with a swift twist of his heel. His smile is dry and his eyes are wandering, calculating. “And you are?”

“Really fucking annoyed that the two of you aren’t—”

“Erik! Erik, he’s Erik,” Charles jumps in, suddenly eager to shuffle out of the booth. He shoulders past the men and comes to stand next to him.

The man smiles lazily. Erik despises every inch of him; he wishes to claw out the man’s eyes as they roam between the two of them unabashedly.     

Really, he wishes to claw out the eyes of anyone who looks at Charles.

But.

Charles isn’t yours, the thought echoes.

It’s the other man’s inquiry now, “Friend? Boyfriend? What?”

Erik puts down the drinks in his hands.

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“Friend,” Charles says quickly, placing his hand on Erik’s elbow. The man’s traveling eyes notice and he chuckles.

“Friend as in… the way we were? That kind of _friend_?”

Charles immediately turns around and shoves Erik along with him. He pushes him back into the crowd, muttering, “Let’s go.”

“Hey! Where are you going?”

Erik continues to let Charles manhandle him towards the exit, as much as he wants to stop and—

“I’ve missed you so much, Charles.”

This time Charles stops.

It’s really fucking neat, he thinks, that he has to be the one to sort out Charles’s ex.

Has to be him.

_If you were mine._

He pats Charles on the shoulder once and saunters past him.

The man, who Erik can now acknowledge as the same height as him, stands with his chest out like it makes a difference.

“I was just saying,” the man says, smirk cocky, hands up in surrender. “He said you’re not his boyfriend, so I was just _saying_ …” his eyes flicker up to land above Erik’s shoulder. He can feel the heat of Charles’s proximity behind him, his desperation a slow grip around Erik’s coat, tugging. If only he could shield the boy completely, hide him with his embrace, let him be seen by nobody but—

He feels his chest tighten.

He feels Charles’s hold on him tighten.

“Let’s just go,” he whispers against his earlobe.

It’s so unnecessary, utterly, but he still takes a step forward.

Charles drags his feet with him.

“He’s not interested,” Erik bites icily. “So back off.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” the man articulates slowly, shaking his head. His eyes wander over to Charles again, daring. “I want to hear it from _your_ mouth.”   

Charles immediately says, “I’m really, really not interested. Sorry.” He clasps onto the edge of Erik’s sleeve. “Can we go now?”

“You’re lying,” the man barks. “Don’t you remember all that time we spent—”

“No I really don’t,” Charles insists, slightly breathless. “We’re leaving now.”

Erik goes ahead and acts possessive of something he can never have, and revels in the self-inflicted torture. He loops his arm around Charles’s waist and guides him out.

When he’s met with resistance, he turns around.

The man’s hand is on Charles’s wrist.

It doesn’t take him longer than a second. He violently bats the man’s hand away, impulses soaring. Don’t touch him, _don’t touch him,_ don’t you _dare—_

But it’s not just a thought, he’s yelling it aloud. He clutches the boy, uncaring of the fist flying towards him. And just like that, he walks into his own attack.

He’d underestimated the man’s strength.

By instinct, his hands are cupping his nose, fingers coming away bloodied.

He’d underestimated Charles’s strength too, because when he comes back to himself, the man is sitting on the floor, and his own body is traitorously following the push of the boy’s forceful touch. They’re through the exit in moments.

“Did you really have to do that?!” Charles is saying, wind tousling his hair. He shuffles Erik out hurriedly, then stops when they’ve rounded the corner. He stands before Erik and pulls down his hands down, wincing as he wipes away the blood that’s smudged around his upper lip. The touch of his light fingers is like an excitement his body can’t respond to, with his nose still throbbing. Charles’s voice softens. “Oh, Erik. It’s not looking good.”

“You should’ve seen the other guy,” Erik says weakly.

Charles rolls his eyes.

“I saw the other guy, and he was fine. Come on.”

They walk on into the cool night.

“I’m dropping you off home,” he says decisively. “Where do you live?”

At first Charles evades the question by pulling down Erik’s hand from his face. He tries again.

“Where do you live, Charles.”

“Please,” he makes a noise that sounds like a whine. “Not there, please, anywhere but there.”

Erik stops in front of the parking lot, huffing. It hurts, and his hand reaches up again, but Charles catches him.

He’d known Charles has issues with his family, but—

Erik can’t help it if the boy would much rather go to Jakob.

He has Erik’s blood smeared over his fingertips.

Charles is shivering in his clothes. Erik is sweating.

“Okay,” he sighs. “Here.” He takes off his coat and places it on the boy’s shoulders.

The moment it drapes over him, he looks at the coat, then up at Erik, astonished.

For a second he wonders if he’s done something wrong, but the boy is looking at him like he’s just performed a miracle.

“What?”

“N-nothing,” the boy says, looking away. “Just… nothing.”

They walk on to the parking lot, Erik’s vision clouding from the blood loss. Charles keeps looking at him like he’s been stabbed.

“I can still breathe, it’s fine.”

“But you’re still bleeding. I think you should go to the hospital.”

“I’m not going to the hospital. It’s nothing.” He passes a hand over his mouth. He looks at Charles, who has stopped to stand in front of him again, inspecting his nose under the light of a lamppost. He steps up on the front of his feet, elevating himself, and crinkles his brows as he places the sides of his hands on Erik’s cheeks.

Erik shuts his eyes when they begin to water.

“It’s not too crooked… well, your nose is already crooked in the first place, so.”

At first he stares at the boy, waiting for his words to sink in. When they do, he raises a hand to swat at him, frowning.

Just because he’s bloody perfect.

Charles takes three quick step backwards, avoiding his aim. Suddenly he’s in the dark while Erik’s under the light, and a spike of worry careens through him.

“Come here,” he says.

The boy takes a step closer, smile apologetic and bordering on a pout.

“Come _closer_ ,” he says, tired.

Charles closes the distance between them, letting Erik pull him nearer by the collar of his own jacket.

“That man, Charles. Did he do anything to you?”

Charles looks down from Erik’s eyes to his nose—his self-consciousness is forced to take a backseat as he tries to read the open expression in the boy’s eyes.

“He just held my wrist,” he says, shrugging. “Nothing you didn’t see.”

He nods his head calmly, pissed off as he is.

The ache shooting up and down the bridge of his nose exacerbates.

Charles is staring up at him with wonder, guilt, second-hand pain, a little bit of a smile.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“No,” Erik says simply.

He doesn’t need to apologise, Erik doesn’t even understand what it is driving him to in the first place, but he’s forgiven.

“Don’t hug me—”

It’s too late, the boy wraps his arms around Erik’s middle and squeezes him so wonderfully tight he thinks he may be exuding more blood.

“I’m sorry Erik,” he whispers again, the apology now more intimate, muffled against his chest. “I’ve been nothing but trouble for you… I’ve been… Christ, Erik, I don’t understand why you even _are_ so nice to me, I’m such a waste of—”

“ _No_ ,” he retorts again, this time pulling the boy up close. He presses the boy’s face against his chest to silence him. His mouth feels hot and wet against the fabric of his shirt. He’s saying something, it occurs to him, when he feels the flutter of lips, an intake of warm breath.

“You and your father are the nicest men I’ve ever met.”

The boy lifts his head off his chest.

“I sometimes, I sometimes can’t believe how I ended up in your lives. I’m so fortunate.”

He looks up at Erik, down at his nose, then up at his eyes again. His mouth twitches in what looks like an attempt at a smile.

Erik nods, throat seemingly clogged.

The lamppost light flickers above them.

He looks up at the entrance of the parking lot, away from the boy, as his arms slip free from holding him.

He wants to be thankful—isn’t he supposed to be?—but he feels himself crumble a little.

“We should go,” Charles says, pointing to Erik’s nose.

They walk on, Charles leading—mainly so he can flick a tear away without Erik noticing.

Erik notices.

He catches up to him, elbowing him in the arm.

“Ugly crying face,” he says, pointing at the boy.

He doesn’t look offended when he turns around, but his gaze does hover directly to his nose.

“Not a word about my nose,” Erik warns, brows raised. “I took a punch for you.”

Charles stops, and to Erik’s dismay, they’re still three cars away from his.

He rolls his eyes.

“Okay, Charles—”

“But _Erik_ , I’m… I didn’t mean to—”

“I know you didn’t.” He places his hand on Charles’s back and lightly pushes him forward until they reach his car. “Come on.”

He opens the passenger seat door and gently shuffles the boy inside before going to the driver’s seat.

Charles tells him to wear his seatbelt. Orders him, rather.

It’s something he always thought his mother might have said.

The thought is eerie.

He doesn’t want to cry in front of the boy.

What a pair they could’ve made.

Fuck.

“What’s wrong?”

Charles places his hand over Erik’s on the steering wheel.

“Nothing.”

He looks down at the blood that blemishes his small pale hand. He swallows.

“Are you going to tell Dad?”

Charles shifts in his seat.

“I don’t know… yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

Erik starts the engine and drives to his father’s flat.

“I should, shouldn’t I?”

“Up to you to tell him why you’ve come back early with blood on your hands.”

Charles turns his head to face him.

“I’m not going to come back early with blood on my hands.” He looks out the window, then back at him. “You’re taking me to Jakob’s? I thought we were going to the hospital.”

“I don’t need to go the hospital,” he mutters.

“Well then I’m not leaving you with a bloody nose, Erik. Did you really think I’d—” the boy stops to huff out an exasperated breath. “As you rightly pointed out, you took a punch for me. I’m not happy about it… I just want to make sure you’re okay, Erik.”

He continues to drive silently, watching the boy from time to time as he glances down at his fingers.

They pull up at his father’s flat.

“You said you don’t live far from here,” Charles says, eyeing the dimly illuminated window, three storeys up. When he looks over at him his eyes are imploring.

He suddenly feels more aware of the dried blood caked over the middle of his face.

He restarts the engine.

“Call Dad. Tell him you’re staying over at my place.”

\---

His place, is small and undecorated and so empty it could’ve once competed with his heart.

Charles lets his gaze drift and wander before realising there’s not much to take in and focusing back on Erik.

He’s sat down on the stray deck chair in the kitchen and watches, blearily, as Charles fusses around him. His search for paper towels is cut short when Erik announces he has none. Charles throws him a concerned look as he stomps away to the restroom and brings back a copious wad of tissue paper. He dabs it in water and wipes away the blood on Erik’s face, slow strokes and a hand cupping his head that slowly rock him to sleep.

“Wake up,” Charles tells him, and he does, blinking up at the boy.

I love you, he thinks.

“A little bit swollen,” he observes.

So much.

“Have you stocked up your fridge?”

His hands leave Erik so suddenly his head falls forward. Charles throws away the bloodied tissues and returns to him, holding him like he’s fragile.

“Erik stay awake please,” he urges, pushing his hair off his face. “Speak about something.”

His hand goes to his chest, palm over his heart.

“My heart hurts,” he rasps. It’s silent, too silent, it doesn’t even echo in the emptiness of his flat. Charles has his head in the fridge, and he’s ranting about the lack of items inside it.

“Beer and milk? That’s all?! Erik how are you _living_ like this?”

He sags in his seat, watching Charles open the freezer and sigh, complacent, at the sight of an icepack. He holds it up like its sacred.

His hand is now cold as he guides Erik into his bedroom.

“You’re going to lay down now,” he says, stacking the two pillows up on each other and letting Erik rest his head on the high surface. He swings his legs up and almost jerks away when he feels the boy’s hands taking off his shoes.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He swallows, letting him take off his other shoe.

Charles hands him the icepack, which he presses against his nose.

“Are you feeling better?”

He makes a choked noise.

“Charles… I can’t see you…” he pats the space next to him on the bed. “Come here.”

The boy follows, sitting against the headboard right next to him.

He can only see him if he tilts his head, but it’s still better.

“I’m fine,” he says, shifting his shoulders to get more comfortable.

The boy is biting his lip and wringing his hands.

“Something’s bothering you,” Erik states, changing hands to hold the icepack with the one further from Charles.

“It’s nothing,” Charles dismisses, shaking his head.

“Just say it.”

“I’m really worried about you.”

“Why is that?”

“You’re living all alone here, without someone to look after you.”

“I’m okay here. I don’t need anyone.”

“When was the last time you were in a relationship with someone?”

“Why do you think I need—No, Charles, I’m not answering that.”

“Jakob said you haven’t dated in years.”

“Why did you ask if you knew?”

He turns his head away from the boy, tense with frustration.

“What if I set you up with someone nice?”

“I’m not sure I like your friends.”

Charles has more to say, it’s evident from the way he audibly catches his breath, but he doesn’t say what he had wanted to.

“Fine. Do as you choose. Good night.”

It’s lighter and softer than such words might be said. His weight lifts from the bed, the breeze of his leave is cold, and his steps are silent.

“Charles,” Erik calls, and the boy stops, obedient. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to go sleep on the couch.”

“I don’t have a couch.”

There’s a pause.

“… I didn’t even notice.”

It’s a fairly good argument, but the boy is persistent.

“Don’t worry, I’ll sort something out for myself. You go to sleep, Erik.”

“You’ve had a tiring day, Charles.” He sighs. “Come sleep here.”

The bed is tough and squeaky but enough for two bodies.

“Come here,” he repeats. “I won’t…”

It’s easier to say what he will do, and that’s stare restlessly around the room until the sound of his thundering heartbeat melts into a silent cadence that will mercifully sweep him into sleep.

He knows he’d rather stay awake and hear his heart when it knows what it’s close to.

“I know, Erik. But I’ll be alright.”

“Sleeping on what? Come here.”

Charles takes a step closer.

“If I snore—”

“I won’t laugh.”

The boy shuffles closer.

He thinks that if that autobiography ever gets written, he’ll never be able to articulate the way he feels in this moment, as Charles slips in next to him on his bed.

\---

He’s aware of every breath he inhales, every sound he makes, every shadow his limbs create against the wall of his room, not yet dressed with drapes.

Charles is silent next to him, not even moving. It’s been an hour; he must be desperate to change positions.

The icepack rustles as he throws it on the floor and finally turns himself, only to find that Charles has turned too, and now they’re face to face.

At first they stare, restlessly.

Then he thinks, I love you. So much.

But Charles shuts his eyes, and they both fall asleep knowing that the last thing he had been looking at was Erik’s face.

It’s enough to soothe every ache, for a while.

\--- 

_Is it still love if I hate what you've done to me._

_Is it still love if love is an understatement._

_Is it still love if I can still breathe, because I can, but my heart hurts everytime, and you haven't offered to put your hands there yet._

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to all of you who have been following this and commenting :D
> 
> Before you read, make sure you check out the other fill for this prompt by Gerec; [Sunday Brunch with the Lensherrs.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/976009)

The shrill ring of a cell phone rouses him.

Lethargy keeps him pinned down, unwilling to move. The tune is unfamiliar to him, however, so he remains still.

Then the bed shifts, and he remembers—

Charles.

Charles is so close.

“Hello?” he hears a sleep-softened voice whisper, close but far.

Erik stiffens, knowing it’s not him Charles is talking to.

The boy had slept silently next to him, his features near enough to touch. And Erik’s hand had cried out, praying for their shape under the tips of his fingers.

He doesn’t move, continuing to feign sleep. He hears,

“Good morning, Jakob. How are you? Did you get my text?”  

He shuts his eyes tighter.

“That’s good. Yes, I’m fine… Last night? It was f-fun, yes. We had. Fun… Celebrated the end of my exams, yes… Erik? Erik is still asleep… Yes, Jakob, I’ll make sure he eats breakfast. I’m going to go down to the bakery and get him something… Don’t _worry_ , Jakob… Take your meds before you go on your jog, or else you’ll forget… I’ll cook you breakfast when I get there, okay… I love you too… Bye, I’ll see you… Bye… _Bye,_ Jakob, now hang up… I’m hanging up now.”

The boy laughs, the sound light and breathy, after which the door to his bedroom opens and closes.

Certain that the boy is in the bathroom, he rolls over onto his back. His right hand traces over the linen still baring Charles’s warmth. He feels like he has to teach himself to breathe all  over again.

\---

He hears Charles leave while he’s still in bed. His cell phone jolts with a text from him.

It reads,

_Just went down to the bakery, in case you’re wondering._

_Tell me if there’s anything you want or forever hold your peace!_

Simple, Erik thinks.

His thumb brushes over the screen.

You.

He types it out in reply.

_I want you._

His thumb hovers over the send button.

He stares at the screen for a length of minutes.

Charles wants him to—

Charles wants to _know_ if—

Maybe it’s a trick question.

No.

Maybe he’s gone insane.

Definitely.

Forever hold your peace.

What peace?

A question over breakfast food, and he’s gone insane.

The thumb held in place twitches.

He removes it, but the phone slips.

A traitorous knuckle presses send.

He stares at the screen in shock.

Loading. Received.

Fuck.

 _“Fuck_!”

He jumps out of bed, frantic, pacing around—

What can he do?

What can he—

“Fuck fuck _fuck_.”

He tugs at his hair, pulling the locks as far as they’d go.

He really needs a haircut.

The thought is shockingly incongruous to his blinding panic.

There’s no way to undo it. The text has been sent, the confession exists, and any time now Charles could be checking it, frowning at it, scrutinising it—

The doorbell rings.

He growls, loudly.

A joke, it’s just a joke.

Though, they’re still on that stage where they joke about _hating_ each other, not the opposite, not quite yet—

He walks languorously to the door.

He takes a deep breath.

The door opens and Charles spills into his flat.

_Fuck._

He faces the wall, listening to the sound of paper bags rustling.

“Charles—”

“Erik did you text me by any chance?”

He whips around.

Charles is standing against the counter.

Four bags, he’s brought, four to carry, and the text he had sent just a minute ago—

“Did you read my text?”

Charles’s shoulders sink.

He looks… apologetic.

“Did you?”

“I’m sorry Erik,” he sighs. “I felt it vibrate but I was down the corridor by then and I couldn’t free a hand and see it but whatever it is you want I can go back and get it for you—”

Erik’s eyes widen.

He reaches forward for Charles and shoves his hand into the front pocket of his jeans.

“What are you doing?”

“You didn’t read the text?”

“No, I…”

Erik pulls the boy’s phone out and practically gasps with relief when it flashes to life.

One unread message.

“Fuck.”

“Erik what…” he turns around to face him, glancing from his phone to the expression of utter, unfathomable relief colouring Erik’s face.

“Nothing—the text was just… silly, I didn’t want you to read it,” he claims, backing away until he’s a safe distance from the boy. He opens up the text and presses delete, breathing out a satisfied sigh.

Charles sketches his brows and folds his arms across his chest.

“Was it something rude?”

Erik thinks about it.

“Sort of,” he says, rubbing a hand across the nape of his neck.

Charles looks unimpressed. He asks for his phone back and Erik carefully places it on his palm.

“ _Erik_. Sending inappropriate texts isn’t mature.”

He nods. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

Erik turns away, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. He wants to laugh, hysterically.

Charles goes back to the bags on the counter.

“I’ll get breakfast ready. You can go have a shower until then.”

Either he isn’t fully dispelled of his insanity, or he has reason to believe that the boy is a little pissed off.

Humming so he doesn’t burst out laughing, he walks off towards the restroom.

\---

It’s oddly domestic.

They eat in silence, mostly, excluding the frequent occasions Charles will insist he eat more and Erik will deny each offer of food.

He’s hungry, but he’s also too busy thinking about what this could be like, every day.

Although Charles has just unceremoniously stuffed a muffin in his mouth, if they were lovers, Erik would dismiss it as a sign of Charles’s love. Because they aren’t, he can get angry over it.

If they were lovers—

Erik wouldn’t get angry.

Everything would be perfect.

They would wake up from the same bed and Erik would text him _I **love**_ _you_ and not fear for his life and they would share bites from the same muffin and when Charles would insist he eat more Erik would obey, eat from his hands and kiss them clean, and wonder if anger even exists in a world where he has Charles.

And they are lovers.

\---

He sits in his room, wet hair hanging over his face like vines.

Charles has been cleaning up in the kitchen. Erik has been playing happy families in his head.

Charles stands at the doorway, looking much older than he needs to be.

“Are you mad at me?”

Erik smooths his hair away from his face but remains silent.

Charles moves further into his room, then pauses to stand above him. The boy picks at a lock of his hair and winds it around his finger.

“Your hair needs trimming.”

“Hm.”

“Do you have scissors? I could cut it for you.”

“I’ll get it done tomorrow.”

Charles steps closer to him, carding his fingers through his sodden hair.

His fingertips massage Erik’s scalp. He leans into the touch, sighing. It’s not even seductive—it’s simply relaxing, comforting.

It feels so good and he loves the boy so much.

When Charles pulls his hand away—

It hurts.

“The cardboard box in the bathroom,” he says in surrender. He looks up at the sight of Charles’s smile as the boy brushes his fingers over his cheek and goes.

He comes back with a comb as well, and a towel he spreads over Erik’s front. His pulse quickens.

“You can trust me,” Charles says, running the comb through his damp hair. “I cut Jakob’s hair for him, and he always says it’s good.”

Erik snorts. “Of course he’d say it’s good. He loves you.”

The comb stops to a halt halfway through his hair, then slowly continues, as though Charles has lost focus.

He quickly moves to stand in front of him, tilting his chin up so their eyes meet. He combs out the hair at the front of his face.

“Hold still,” he says quietly, taking a step backwards to stare at him, brows crinkled and eyes narrowed, then steps forward, combing through strands of hair and cutting them off with a swipe of the scissors. The sound is sharp and makes him shiver, especially when he opens his closed eyes to see Charles standing directly in front of him. He keeps his hands fisted on his lap. Charles hums, snipping off more locks. They fall on his cheekbone and he makes a surprised noise. “Sorry!”

He doesn’t move his head, but tightens his fists when he feels Charles lean in close to him and brush away the hairs from his face. He doesn’t know how much longer he can hold still.

The cutting resumes, chunks of his hair falling heavily on his shoulder. Charles is as silent as he had been the whole night, nothing but the sound of his breath to hear. Erik’s throat feels too tight to swallow, so he remains achingly still, glancing at Charles past his eyelashes. The boy crowds around him, coming closer when he gets to his ears. He feels the slightest touch on his skin when Charles’s fingers carefully gather his hair and snip them in half, the sound making Erik shiver. He bites on his lip.

 _Shink_ , and more of his hair is sliced off, cold metal teasing the surface of his skin. He inhales sharply. Charles goes around to the back of his neck, goosebumps awaiting him, and threads his fingers through the strands there before setting the scissor’s blades midway and clipping the hairs short. Then, with a pleased hum, he moves over to his other ear, and Erik can practically _feel_ how red they burn.

He clenches his fists tighter. The boy pauses, then comes round to stand in front of him. He crouches down, looking from Erik’s right ear to his left, trimming off parts until both sides are even.

“And I think… you’re done.”

Shuffling forward, he places the scissors down and cards a hand through his hair, checking if they’ve been sheared to the same height, then scruffs his hair until stray pieces fall out. Erik almost gasps aloud when Charles brings his face forward to blow his hot breath across Erik’s skin.

“ _Stop_ ,” he hisses, ripping the towel off his chest and standing up, uncaring of the mess he creates. “I thought you were _done_.” He hides his face, his expression, the flustered hue on his cheeks, by ducking his head. He dusts off the hair on him, lips thinned.

“Erik,” Charles calls, taking the towel from him. “Why are you so angry?”

Because he’s everything.

Because if they were lovers this wouldn’t be so difficult to deal with. Because this is _unfair_ , this is _torture_.

And there’s nobody he can blame.

“I’m not,” he deadpans, running a hand down his shirt. The boy steps forward with the towel, mumbling, “Let me,” but Erik quickly snatches the towel back and helps himself. “Why are you so—” he cuts himself off with a sigh.

“Why am I so what?” he’s inevitably asks.

“Nothing,” he replies, turning to storm out of his room and into the restroom. He switches the light on and looks in the mirror, suddenly desperate to find faults.

“Is it alright?” he hears the boy say, and he can picture him wringing his hands, biting his lip, fumbling with the hem of his shirt.

He wipes off the few hairs still littered on his neck before returning to his room. Charles hovers around him.

“You should probably go, now,” Erik says quickly, contemplating what to use as an alternative for a broom to sweep up the mess. “I’ll clean this up myself,” he adds, knowing Charles is probably thinking along the same lines. “Dad is—he’s probably waiting for you.”

The boy nods. He quietly questions him, “Do you not like the haircut?”

“No,” he says,  “I do.” He turns around and looks at the boy, making sure that when he says the next words, his eyes don’t move from him. “It’s good.”

The boy stops wringing his hands.

“Oh,” he says quietly, nodding and looking away. “Okay,” he breathes out. “I’m—I’m glad… I’m going to go now?”

Erik shows him out and watches him retreat with eyes he wants to close.

\---

Sometimes he forgets that when he gets home after work, there will be nobody there.

He tosses his briefcase on the fort of boxes still piled up in his lounge.

Instantly, as he sits himself down on the tiled floor, he remembers.

Jakob and Charles are in love with each other.

Charles lives with Jakob.

Jakob depends on Charles.

Erik—

Erik is sitting in his unfurnished flat, alone, with his heart stuck in his mouth.

He takes out his phone and contacts the head hunter.

“I’m interested,” he says. “I’ve made up my mind.”

He looks around his apartment as she lists off questions.

“I’m sure,” he confirms. “My stuff is packed anyway. I’ll move there within the week.”

She congratulates him.

He thanks her, shattered.

\---

There’s no point in knocking if he has a key. Isn’t that right?

He stands in front of his father’s flat with the key wrenched in.

It would be just as loud if he took it right back out, but he supposes he’s already notified them of his presence.

He turns the key and hesitantly slips his head through the opened door.

The kitchen is empty, the dining table unoccupied, but the sofa is inhabited. His father is nowhere in sight.

He knocks now, watching the feet up on the sofa shift and come down onto the floor before stepping closer towards him.

“Hi,” he hears a meek voice. The door is opened fully. “Come in.”

“Where’s Dad?” Erik asks, debatably impolite.   

“You just missed him,” Charles says. He seems like he’s still expectant of a reply to his greeting. Hasn’t he learned yet?

Maybe not as perfect a match as Erik had thought.

He soars with that hope.

Still.

“Where did he go,” Erik says numbly, shrugging his coat off, deciding he’ll wait. His legs automatically take him to his old room. He stops, then continues to head in.

The bed is neatly made, as though it’s in a showroom. There are a few bags and clothes hung.

Charles’s.

“He said he was meeting up with a friend. Someone from his old Golfing Club.”

Erik nods, remembering. He reunites with them every month, but lately, the number of friends has subsided.

There’s a reason.

“Just _a_ friend? He used to meet with the entire club.”

Charles is watching him vigilantly.

“I know,” he says, looking almost exhausted.

Erik goes to sit on the sofa. Charles follows, still staring at him.

“Know what?” he tries, folding up his shirt sleeves.

Charles sighs.

He sinks into the sofa, head hitting the headrest.

“His friends… avoid him now.”

Erik winces at the understatement.

“They don’t… they don’t approve of his relationship with me.”

He bites his lip once he’s spoken.

“And what do you think?” Erik asks lightly, moving to slowly do his other sleeve.

“I think they should mind their own business about who does what. Jakob isn’t any different just because he’s in a relationship. Regardless of—of who I am and how old I am and…”

“What gender you are,” Erik finishes off, reaching for a cigarette from inside his coat pocket. He looks at Charles over the white stick in his mouth.

“Oh,” the boy says, folding both legs so they’re underneath him. “Well, that as well, I suppose.”

“Didn’t occur to you, did it?”

That he made two grown men think twice about what they’ve always wanted.

“I don’t think you realise that it is a bit shocking,” he murmurs, flicking at his lighter to produce a flame. “But I don’t see why you should care.”

“Jakob cares, and what bothers him bothers me.”

Erik breathes out smoke with a long sigh.

“You shouldn’t get upset over it.” He dusts his fingers. “I’ll talk to Dad if you want.”

“Please,” Charles says, body sagging. Suddenly there’s a rustle, fabric against fabric, and the boy is sliding down the sofa, his head dropped onto Erik’s shoulder. “I know he’s upset. They were all good friends of his, weren’t they?” A sigh. “He just mentioned it offhandedly, but they gave him so much hell. It’s not fair.”

Erik hums noncommittally. He jerks his shoulder to shove Charles away.

The boy whines, but slowly complies.

“You didn’t really expect it’d be so easy, did you? Everyone suffers at some point in a relationship.”

Charles frowns. Erik inhales his next puff to the brim of his lungs.

“That’s the whole point of a relationship,” he continues. “You suffer but it’s worth it.”

Erik looks down at Charles’s fingers. They curl into a loose fist.

“You sound like… you—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

Charles looks up at him, alarmed.

Erik doesn’t apologise.

They fall into silence.

His cigarette shrinks under his nose.

At some point Charles sits up and says, “I really don’t understand you sometimes.”

To which Erik replies, “Good.”

They fall again. Into silence.

Erik realises that his hands are most likely made to fit over Charles’s just perfectly.

Erik realises that he’s only ever suffered.

His advice has never been laudable, but he does try, unlike Emma.

Charles suddenly sits up again.

Erik leans against his hand, cigarette burning out between two fingers.

“Tony and I had lunch today. He said he’s opening a branch of his company in Chicago.”

Erik clears his throat and looks away.

“He told me he’s going to offer you a job there.”

Erik gets up to dispose of his cigarette.

Charles follows.

Here it goes.

Jakob comes in at the perfect time looking haggard.

He doesn’t want to upset his father more, but—

“Hi Dad,” he says too quickly.

His father brightens at the sight of him, then looks at Charles, and his expression grows tired.

“Hey Jakob. How did it go?”

Jakob shrugs, taking off his scarf.

It’s that dismissive demeanour that Erik possesses and can blame on inheritance.

Erik steps to the side when Charles throws himself into Jakob’s arms.

Kisses, loud and furious and hard.

Jakob shuts his eyes and gives in.

Erik looks for another cigarette.

“Need to talk to you Dad.”

It can’t wait.

Within the week, he’s promised—

“Of course, son,” Jakob says, rubbing Charles’s back.

Charles clings.

“It’s not your fault, my angel,” he whispers to him. “Come on now.”

“Everything’s my fault,” he says quietly.

Jakob pats his cheek, brows furrowing as though they’ve had this conversation before and he’s tired of repeating himself.

“Dad,” Erik says, fumbling to light his cigarette. “This is urgent.”

The boy lifts himself off Jakob’s chest, eyes large.

 _No_ , he mouths.

Erik looks away.

Jakob places a kiss on the boy’s neck before leading the way into his room.

“You said yes?!” Charles hisses, hands fisted.

Erik watches anger flare and dim down to hurt, wet at the rim of blue like a clear ocean.

He nods, at the very least.

\---

“It’s a big step for my career. You know—Tony said he’ll be giving me free accommodation in Chicago, a pay rise, a company car, and—”

“Erik,” his father interjects, face covered with his hands. “Why do you keep wanting to move so far away?”

Erik swallows and flaps a hand through the smoke greying the air.

“I want a change,” he shrugs. “I want to start writing again. I want to move up in my career. I’ve—”

He looks into his father’s eyes when he says,

“I’ve fallen for someone.”

“… Oh.”

There’s still no shadow under the door, so he continues.

“I’m in love.” He clears his throat. “Which is why I need to move there.”

Jakob grins, a hand clapping him on the back.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?! Of _course_ you should move to Chicago if you’ve found someone—and then you can bring her right back here for us to meet, yes?”

Erik chuckles.

“Sure.”

He puts the cigarette to his lips, still laughing.

Jakob laughs with him. So happy, he says.

Finally, he says.

Erik nods.

“Don’t tell Charles anything,” he says, walking out. “I’ll tell him myself.”

\---

The boy isn’t in the lounge or the kitchen, where Erik rids his cigarette, so he heads into his old room, the door to which is slammed shut.

It’s dark inside, but Charles’s aim is still fairly accurate.

He lobs him with one pillow, then another, and a third to his face, until there are none left for him to throw.

Erik sighs and picks them all up.

“Very mature,” he grouches.

“ _Chicago_!” Charles calls out. “I—I bloody _hate you_.”

“It’s Tony you should hate.”

He sits down on the bed heavily.

“I hope you find it awful over there.”

“So well-wishing,” Erik mutters.

“It’s all my fault,” his voice goes sullen, muffled by the end of his t-shirt he’s managed to gather up and stuff into his mouth. Erik scowls and reaches forward to pull it free from between his teeth. Charles’s eyes glow a little, even when it’s mostly dark. “It’s all my fault,” he repeats, a pout on dark lips. “Jakob is unhappy because of me, you’ve been moving away because of me, nothing is right at home nothing is right _anywhere_ I go and I just _hate_ myself.”

“You’re overly dramatic,” Erik sighs, almost tempted to push the material of his shirt back into his wet mouth and quiet him. “Dad is upset because his friends are narrow-minded idiots, I’m going to Chicago because I want to… move up in my career and travel, and your home—” he pauses, frowning, “—this is your home, isn’t it?”

Charles’s brows crinkle. He nods.

“ _Well_ then.”

The next few seconds are mainly Erik waiting for Charles to cry and Charles pretending like he isn’t battling tears.

“I’m going to miss you,” he whispers.

Erik touches the boy’s hand, thumb feeling for a scar that’s faded into an innocent thin line. No longer any evidence of Erik’s anger.

It’s almost weird to remember a time when he wasn’t in love.

Narrowed slits of blue look at him critically.

“You never say things back,” he bemoans, slumping down against the neat covers. “I bet the first person to tell you they love you had to sit and wait in silence as you finished your cigarette.”

Erik laughs.

Charles only frowns more, a tear gliding down his cheek and falling onto the bed sheets.

“I’ll miss you as well,” Erik says quietly.

Charles nods, sniffing through a stuffed nose. Both of his hands go up to cover his face, but Erik pulls them back, hands closing over his wrists, just to say,

“Ugly crying face.”

Charles makes a gargled noise of annoyance, eyes rolling back.

“You can hardly see my face right now.”

“I can see it’s ugly.”

The boy kicks him.

Oh.

“Charles?”

The boy fights his arms free and turns to flop onto his stomach, face pressing into the covers.

“I was kidding?”

Erik shakes him by his shoulder.

“You’re not ugly,” he says, moving forward so his voice is clearer. “Charles—you’re not ugly, it’s only when you cry. You cry all the fucking time, you know that?”

Charles groans unhappily.

“Fine,” Erik snaps. “Sorry. You’re not ugly. At all. Ever. Not even when you cry. You’re beautiful. Very, very, very beautiful.”

The boy stirs, slowly.

He keeps  _staring_ at him.

Erik quietly moves to stand up.

Charles pulls him back by his hand, gripping three fingers.

“What?” Erik says.

“N-Nothing,” he sniffles, letting go. “Could you get me a tissue, please?”

Erik fetches him some and hands them to him as he rubs his eyes and sits up.

“Sorry.” He mops up his nose, dries his face, pushes his hair back.

Erik says, “I’m moving by—”

“I also think you’re very. Handsome.”

He shuffles his feet. Charles fiddles with the tissues on his lap.

“You don’t need to… say that.”

“I mean it, um. I just think you’re very handsome.”

“Alright. Well. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. What were you saying, sorry?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“Oh. You’ll remember it.”

Erik clears his throat.

Charles says, “I want to hug you. Just once. Before you go.”

Erik hears him stand up.

“Just once,” he allows.

“Okay,” Charles whispers.

“No crying. None at all.”

The boy nods, rubbing a hand down his face.

He wraps his arms around Erik’s waist, tight.

“No crying,” he reminds him.

Charles doesn’t.

Erik presses his mouth to Charles’s head.

His arms tighten.

“Aren’t you going to hug me back?”

“You sound like you’re going to cry.”

“I’m not, I won’t.”

“Okay.”

He places his hands on the small of his back.

“ _Properly_.”

Erik holds him closer.

Charles goes quiet and limp against his chest.

How lucky one would be, to not have to pretend they hate this.

He lets his hands fall to his sides.

“Happy now?”

He pulls Charles back by his shoulders to look at him.

The boy shakes his head.

“You’re a handful, aren’t you?”

Not that Erik would’ve minded one bit.

Charles cracks a small smile.

“Take care of yourself,” the boy says quietly.

“You too. And Dad. He loves you a lot, you know that?”

Charles nods.

“Good,” he sighs.

“I really—”

“Boys!”

Jakob’s voice rings through their ears as the door to the room is opened, light seeping in and startling them apart.

Charles is hurriedly straightening his t-shirt and fixing his hair.

Erik clears his throat and takes a step back.

“It’s so dark in here,” Jakob comments, switching the light on. The brightness is difficult to get used to. Charles blinks incessantly, turning to look at Jakob. “Is everything okay?”

Charles gives his head a nod.

Erik follows suit.

Jakob walks over to them both, kissing Erik up on his forehead before turning around and doing the same to Charles.

“How about we all go to dinner tomorrow night,” Jakob suggests, pulling Charles flush against his waist and rubbing his back again.

It must be something he likes.

Erik makes note, pathetically.

“That’s fine with me,” he says.

“I don’t have to go,” Charles mumbles.

“My love, don’t be like that.” He grabs his lover by his face and plants a quick kiss on his lips.

Charles looks at Erik nervously.

“I don’t mind if you come,” Erik says, prompting Jakob to turn toward him and say, “ _See_?!”

“Are you sure?” Charles asks Erik, even though Jakob’s the one facing him and Erik’s the one trying to look away.

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “It’s getting late, I should head out. I’ll see you both tomorrow, then.”

Jakob walks him to the door.

Erik takes his time walking back into the lounge to get his coat, glancing at the bedroom to see if Charles will come out.

He doesn’t.

So he silently leaves.

\---

They have dinner where they always do, a table that’s at an equidistance from the exit and the chef’s kitchen.

Jakob mentions his reason for it, but Erik just stupidly looks forward at Charles.

“Hm,” he says eventually.

Jakob asks him about Chicago, when he’ll be seeing his new place, if he has help for moving in, how much he’ll be earning now.

Erik’s answers are as minimal and monosyllabic as he can manage.

Charles is disturbingly quiet, picking at his food and letting them talk instead.

When Jakob asks him if he likes his food, he looks up at them both, alarmed.

“It’s fine.” He shrugs, waving a hand. “Please just go on, continue talking. In fact excuse me, I’m just going to—”

He sits up from his seat and lopes to the restroom.

Jakob watches after him.

“He’s acting odd,” he says simply, before resuming their conversation.

Charles’s food gets cold.

Over ten minutes pass.

The waiter swoops in to take their plates, but Jakob stops the man from taking Charles’s, still unfinished.

“I’ll go check on him,” Erik says, standing. “You can order dessert.”

He goes into the restroom, waiting for the person coming out to pass through first before slipping inside.

There’s a sudden noise, feet shuffling against tiles as a cubicle is shut loudly with a flash of brown hair.

With nobody else in the restroom, he calls out, “Charles!”

“I’m using the loo!” he shouts back.

“You just went in _now_ , when you saw me. What have you been doing all this time?”

“That’s rude to ask!”

“Open the door, I know you’re not doing anything.”

“I have my _pants_ down.”

“No you don’t, now open the door.”

He hears the boy curse.

“What’s wrong with you? You’ve just been loitering around in the restroom for absolutely no reason, haven’t you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Come out.”

The lock flicks and the latch turns. Charles is looking down at his feet miserably.

“So?”

“I was hiding in here.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to let you two be alone.”

Erik sighs and pulls Charles out.

“You’re ridiculous. You know your dinner went all cold. And Dad got all worried. Don’t do stuff like that.”

Charles stops when they get to the door.

“Am I allowed to visit you whenever I want?”

Erik sighs and squeezes Charles’s forearm.

He doesn’t know why he does.

But it feels right do it again and say, “of course.”

Charles nods.

“You’re not really seeing someone, are you?”

Erik smiles, despite it all.

Standing in a restroom with the boy he loves, clutching his arm and taking him back to his boyfriend. His father, no less.

Who would possibly want to date someone who does that on a Tuesday evening?

“No, I’m not seeing anyone,” he clarifies. “But don’t tell Dad.”

Erik squeezes his arm again.

“You know he’s going to—”

“I’ll figure something out,” he sighs. “Don’t worry.”

Charles doesn’t walk on.

He cups Erik’s head and rises on the balls of his feet.

And kisses him soundly on the cheek.

Next to his mouth.

Erik grabs for him and presses his lips to Charles’s cheek.

Too close to his mouth.

They blush, flushed, hot-skinned and short of breath—

Erik releases Charles slowly, bringing his hands down to his sides.

Charles is still rigid.

“Sorry,” Erik says.

“No… I’m sorry,” Charles replies.

For what, he wonders.

“We should go.”

“Yes, we should.”

Erik strokes his fingers over his cheek.

Charles looks away, moving to leave and return to their table.

Erik follows, feeling his cheek with the tips of his fingers for the rest of the night.

\---

Chicago greets him with rain and helpful neighbours.

A distracting job.

Filling in for everyone and working overtime to avoid the empty flat.

Three months pass.

Charles doesn’t visit him once.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the super long delay!! Thankfully, exams are over, so the next update should come soon.

“I can’t—I’m sorry—I _can’t_ —”

“Hey, it’s okay, j—”

“No, no, no please I can’t do it. Please just leave.”

When he doesn’t, he repeats himself.

“Please leave.”

He rolls over.

A stranger’s hand runs down his arm. He body shivers in protest.

“Please,” he hisses, broken.

“Okay.”

The bed bounces as the man gets up from it. There’s the sound of him gathering his clothes, struggling to get them on, and then mercifully leaving.

The door shuts.

He can breathe again.

He places a hand over his eyes and simply tries to calm himself. His heartbeat stutters, as though frightened, endangered. He pulls back the covers and hoists himself up on sweaty feet. He takes a shower and spends most of it scrubbing off the trail of fingers, invisible kisses, hot breath.

Clean and dry, he returns to the his side of the bed, not daring to move the inch that would place him in the stranger’s shadow.

He glances at his phone, sitting there with nothing to tell him.

Seven months, and that indecent brat hasn’t bothered once.

\---

The first draft sits on the coffee table, decorated with brown rings of coffee mug bottoms, so really, now the first draft is the coffee table and the table itself has no use.

He tells a colleague to read it, coffee stains and all.

This is fucking depressing shit, he says.

He sends the Emma the first draft, neatly as a document.

This just needs cleaning up, she says.

In the end it becomes a coffee table.

\---

This really is fucking depressing shit, he thinks.

Nobody wants to read about the worst time in their lives, retold from the perspective of an imaginative cynic.

Nobody wants to read about something they try and forget.

And everyone tries to forget the time they’ve had to hide their broken heart.

\---

Jakob pays him a visit every other week.

Erik looks past his shoulder each time.

Where are those blue eyes—

The room is full with air and company and yet empty.

 _He_ feels empty.

Where are those blue eyes?

\---

There’s a chance his father loves the boy the way he craves to.

A _hope_ , really.

They go hiking, and Erik doesn’t ask about the boy he loves once.

He searches for jealousy inside himself.

Instead he finds guilt.

Happiness suits his father so well. It’s like watching two long lost friends reunite.

Who would he be, for wanting to tear those friends apart.

He doesn’t.

Perhaps he wants a long lost friend of his own.

Perhaps he wants to be able to look at a dull skyline from a lumpy hilltop and whisper out the beautiful poetry it reminds him of. The one his lovely angel had told him. Last night, apparently.

Erik sighs and looks away.

He rubs two rocks and waits for a spark.

\---

Neglect has let his hair grow to his nape. He combs through the tangled curls, still not long enough to tie up.

Sometimes he looks for silver hair.

Charming lines around his mouth.

That grace and respect that lives in his eyes.

So unlike the hard emptiness he’d given to his son.

Women curl their fingers in his hair, stroke their nails down his chest, whisper against his jaw.

He always pretends he doesn’t understand.

\---

He tosses his phone from hand to hand.

A careful text to Charles Xavier.

_I really need a haircut._

\---

“Presentation tomorrow,” he informs his team. “Everybody on time, looking their best, and no fucking about.”

He pointedly scrunches up the piece of paper in his hand and throws it in the trash. A very unflattering cartoon rendition of Tony Stark sits crumpled in its corner.

One pair of eyes linger on him as he shrugs his suit jacket on and turns off the projector. He ignores her gaze and brushes a hand through his hair.

“Tuck your fucking chairs in, for fuck’s sake,” he mutters aloud, shoving a few in himself hastily, knocking chair legs against the table’s.

“And look! He’s in a great mood!”

Erik turns and sees, the blessed sight, of Tony Stark himself walking into the board room with his arms spread.

Charles comes in behind him.

Erik almost trips over a chair.

Tony rattles on.

There’s a duffel bag over the boy’s shoulder.

 _I still love you_ , he thinks. As though there’s a doubt.

“Hi, Erik,” he says.

Erik looks from Tony to Charles and swallows.

“You’re… here.”

“Yes,” the boy smiles, eyes hovering all over him.

 _Charles is fucking your Dad?_ Tony had once asked, amused chuckles coating the words.

Erik takes Charles by his shoulder and hurriedly guides him back out.

He throws down his briefcase.

He waits until Charles puts down his bag.

“Hello, Erik,” Charles says.

He still doesn’t say it back.

Charles looks down at his hands as though he knows. Remembers.

“Nine months,” Erik says.

Then he takes hold of the boy by his shoulders and moves him to stand against the wall, until he has no choice but to look up, his forehead touching Erik’s.

And they breathe, eyes locked.

“I’m sorry,” the boy whispers.

Erik nods, his nose brushing against Charles’s.

He hasn’t grown an inch.

He’s all the same: same eyes, same placement of freckles, same lips, just like he’d left him, just like he would remember in the mornings after his dreams.

Not even his love has changed.

It still aches in his chest and still sits lodged in his throat.

Charles is going to hug him, he thinks.

The boy parts his lips and raises his arm.

His hand goes straight to his hair instead.

Those small pale fingers with the bitten nails thread through his hair, straightening out curls that insistently spring back to remembered shape. He can even feel him gather the loose strands by his neck, as though attempting to tie them—

Charles makes an annoyed sound when they don’t settle together. Still not long enough to be tied.

Erik shrugs.

The boy smiles, sighing.

“I’ll cut it for you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m…” He points towards his duffel bag.

“Sure,” Erik says quickly, stepping away to reach down for both the bag and his own briefcase.

“You don’t have to,” Charles says, a hand stretched out.

Erik stalks towards the elevators, looking over his shoulder to tell the boy, “Shut up.”

Charles grins.

\---

If he’d known that the love of his life would travel across the country to live with him for a while, he probably would have tidied up his place a bit more.

He explains that to the boy.

Leaving a certain detail out.

Charles says, “It’s alright. I just wanted to see you.”

“Nine months,” he says sternly, despite the butterflies and shit.

“You didn’t come back _once_ to visit.”

“I’m not the one who said I’d visit.”

Charles goes silent. Even when he tells Erik, “Put on your seatbelt,” he’s quiet; too quiet.

The roads are bare, so he presses down on the pedal hard and accelerates the car.

Breeze surges in through the open windows as the vehicle jerks rapidly to double its speed, drawing out a shocked gasp from the boy’s gut, loud and sharp.

“Erik what the fuck—!”

He chuckles as he takes a sharp turn to the left, heading into another clean street.

It’s like the world knows his love is here. With him.

But nobody wants to watch.

Everyone wants to forget, after all.

“Erik slow _down_!”

He glances towards him and sees the look of fear on Charles’s perfect oval face, his back flat against the seat and his fingers gripping the seatbelt, skin white.

“Look at the fucking road!”

There’s nobody on the road, the speed limit is yet to be met, but he laughs and slows down anyway.

He abruptly stops a split second before the red light flicks on. The car heavily jolts to a halt.

Charles lets out a huge gusty sigh of gratitude.

“You’re an arse,” he says quietly.

“A nice arse.”

Charles pushes him gently on the shoulder, but Erik lets out a pained, exaggerated yelp.

The boy apologises for the rest of the journey.

\---

There are take-out pamphlets everywhere, pinned to the fridge and scattered at their feet like a welcome mat, and that, perhaps, isn’t even the worst part.

When Charles walks in behind him, he looks around at the beer bottles on every other flat surface, heaps of cigarette ashes collected in variously shaped ash trays—some on the ground, some up on the kitchen counters—the windows are left open, so wind is viciously howling in, jarring the curtain frame and making the lampshade on the ceiling sway.

Other than that, it’s fairly tidy.

Charles doesn’t seem to agree.

“Good _grief_ Erik.”

He shrugs. The odour is clean, there’s nothing hazardous to trip over, the stain on the sofa has vanished, and—

The love of his life is here.

How much more perfect could this place be.

He goes to put Charles’s bag away in his bedroom and returns to the lounge to see the boy ducking to collect all the beer bottles.

“What are you doing? Go have a rest.”

Charles continues to gather the bottles, rather ignorantly, and then he reaches for the one on the coffee table.

He tilts his head, a frown wedged between his brows as he stares down at his hopeless first draft.

“Erik,” he says, reaching for the stack of pages that comprise the depressing shit marred with inky words that he had foolishly deemed well enough to publish. “Is this what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?”

He goes to take the bottles out of Charles’ hands as he reaches for the filthy pages still sitting, collecting dust on his table, held down by more bottles, a cigarette pack, and a lighter.

“It’s the first draft of your book.”

“You really don’t want to read it,” he says, fetching a black bag to place all the bottles in. “You should sleep, you’ve just travelled. Have you called and told Dad you’ve reached?”

“Hm,” he replies absently, thumbing past the first page and settling down on the couch.

“Please don’t read it.”

He feels embarrassed.

“Why not? I’m sure it’s great.”

“It’s really not.”

“Let me be the judge of that, love.”

Erik watches the boy as he kicks his shoes off and pulls his knees up, making himself comfortable in his home, reading a piece of his heart, referring to him as _love_.

“Don’t call me that,” Erik says. He stalks to the windows and pulls them shut.

Charles silently continues to read.

“I’m not your love,” he adds, anguished.

Charles stops reading. He looks down at the carpet.

“I’ll be back in a while.” He takes off his suit jacket, scoops up his keys and a cigarette pack with one hand and the bag of beer bottles with the other as he makes his escape.

He takes a deep breath on the other side of the door. He goes to discard the bag, smokes two cigarettes in a row out near the car park, then goes to the store to buy the sort of food he knows Charles will chide him for not already having.

When he returns, Charles isn’t reading. He’s sleeping.

Erik silently puts the groceries away, stealing glances of the boy’s face as he rests his head uncomfortably close to his chest and dozes, mouth open just a bit, one hand splayed over the last page of the pile.

\---

In his fantasy, they are arguing.

Which isn’t difficult to picture.

Still.

They argue, and Erik rages, and Charles cries, and then Erik wraps his arms around him so tightly his cries stutter to a hiccup, and then the boy stills in his arms and lets Erik tip his head up and kiss him.

And that’s all.

\---

Evening dwells, and Erik doesn’t bother switching the lights on.

Charles continues to sleep, but now his legs have stretched out, his head is back against the armrest, and the sheets of Erik’s heart are spread everywhere around him like a blanket.

Erik watches as he turns around again, this time frowning as he smacks his lips, lost in sleep.

He sets another cigarette aflame and watches it burn, the only light in the room when Charles’s eyes are closed.

Another hour peacefully passes and his hunger slowly begins to burn the pit of his stomach, so he orders take-out, of course, carefully instructing the delivery man to silently knock instead of ringing the bell. A sleeping guest, he adds, as though he cares about what they know. He’s very special.

The man on the line says “Errrrr…” and trails off.

He eats quietly in his bedroom. He places a quilt over Charles after carefully collecting the pages and hovers around him restlessly. He deliberately misses a call from Jakob. He looks over the notes for tomorrow’s presentation. He puts his laptop down and stares at the boy again.

The boy who he loves in whispers and screams, who gives him feelings he quietly riots over, sleeps soundly in his home, on the sofa where he has wept for him, and he can’t even take the boy and place him on a bed, or tuck the blanket into him, or kiss his sweet lips.

He never learned to love, not in time.

 _I saw you first_ , he thinks fiercely.

Like it helps.

He goes to his room and undresses, then follows Charles into deep sleep.

\---

The bed bounces suddenly.

Somehow, he doesn’t yell murder—his eyes fly open to his dark room and the first thing to keep him busy is his thumping mad heart, beating too fast for his resting state. Then he surveys the room and finds that he’s joined on the bed by a kneeling figure.

“Hey. Erik. Are you awake?”

He groans and pulls the covers over his face. Then he _realises_ , and he groans deeper, as he pulls the covers back down.

“What,” he demands.

“Erik,” Charles says again, this time softly, as though he’s a child about to be told something terrible. He mentally searches for a cigarette. “Erik I can’t sleep.”

“Charles,” he sighs. “There’s nothing I can do.”

As much as he wants to stay awake for him, the weight of his eyelids doesn’t allow it. He turns his face into the pillow.

“No, I mean… I woke up and,” he pauses to slump down next to him. Erik opens his eyes again. “I can’t go back to sleep.”

“I have a presentation tomorrow,” he grumbles.

“Okay. You can go to sleep.”

Charles rests his head on his pillow. Erik experimentally closes his eyes and opens them again to see the boy still staring back at him.

“What?”

“What?”

“Charles…”

He makes a move to get up. The boy grips his arm and pulls him back down.

“Where are you going?”

“To sleep on the sofa.”

“No, stay here.”

“Why?”

“Come here,” he demands, voice steady as he opens his arms. “Come here Erik.” He curls his fingers, summoning.

“What do you want?” he rubs his eyes, unsure of what he’s seeing. Then, “Oh.” He sighs. “Now I know.”

He lets himself be pulled down to Charles’s chest. He rests his head on him, breathing in clean air so close to the boy’s skin. The cotton of his t-shirt is soft under his ear, and he listens out for a pulse, caged breaths, but only hears his own pounding heartbeat.

Charles places a hand over his shoulder, then moves it upwards to pet his hair.

“So what did you think of it,” he goes ahead and asks, his voice coming weak from out of a constricting throat. He rearranges himself so he can face Charles, his hands unknowing of what to do—but if he reaches out and holds the boy’s small pale hand, threads their fingers together, what’s the worst that can happen?

Charles can pull away and then push him away… but he doesn’t.

This is comfort, he thinks. The boy just had to read his shitty first draft out of kindness, and now he’s having to suffer through the aftermath.

“It was harrowing,” he sighs, fingers sliding against Erik’s. His thumb strokes Erik’s knuckle, then their palms align and their wrists touch, and Erik feels like he’s finally making love to someone. “Why did you write something so upsetting?”

He shrugs, staring at where their hands meet.

Charles’s chest isn’t very broad, but it’s firm enough. His face rests easy as he turns it away, pulling on their hands so he can observe the way their skin sits together. There’s not much light in the room, so he leans forward and switches on the bedside lamp. Erik squints for a while before relaxing over Charles again. He bends a leg, his knee touching Charles’s ankle.

It’s not the worst that can happen.

Erik could slip his fingers underneath the hem of Charles’s t-shirt and run his fingertips up his skin, but the world still wouldn’t end, would it?

Charles’s ribs protrude a little when he breathes.

Erik clenches Charles’s hand.

“I don’t know,” he says thoughtfully.

“How are you so content with all this… this miserable solitude?”

“Stop it Charles,” he snaps. “You jump to such ridiculous conclusions.”

“It _is_ ridiculous, but it’s true. You’re lonely and you do nothing about it.”

“Fuck off,” he huffs, leaning up on his hands, their touch breaking away. He grabbles for the cigarette pack under his pillow and plucks one out to place it in his mouth.

“You don’t really want me to fuck off,” Charles laughs.

_Laughs._

“I’m the closest thing you have to a friend right now and you know it.”

Erik is halfway through his glare when Charles takes the cigarette out of his mouth.

“Stop playing around,” he says, moving to kneel on the bed. He reaches for his lighter and closes it in his fist. He knows he can easily take another from the box beneath his pillow but it’s not the same. Snatching his cigarette is plain silly.

“You’re still not going to admit it, are you?” the boy asks, twirling the cigarette between his fingers.

Erik raises his hands to his ears. “I’m a miserable loner. I can’t deny it. I just don’t need you to point it out. It makes me more of a miserable loner.”

Charles pouts.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

“May I have it back?” he gestures to the cigarette.

“I thought you had an early night.” Charles glances at him with narrowed eyes.

“So?”

“But it makes your breath smell,” the boy puts the cigarette away on the side table.

“Oh.” He slowly lays down on the bed again. He rests his head on the pillow. It’s suddenly itchy. He wordlessly moves back to Charles’s chest. “Okay.”

The boy curls an arm around him.

Erik pulls up the covers.

“Your hair is tickling me,” Charles whispers, ruffling the unruly strands.

Erik flattens his hair down and shifts so his forehead is against the boy’s neck instead.

“How much did you miss me?” he asks quietly. He slows his breaths, tense with anticipation.

“A lot,” the boy answers. He scratches his fingernails on Erik’s scalp, light enough to make him sigh heavily.

“A lot,” he echoes, pleased by the sound of that. “How long are you staying for?”

Charles hums, his chest vibrating under Erik’s cheek.

“I can’t really stay for long, I’m afraid. It’s our anniversary next week.”

“Has it been that long? Already?” he scratches his stubble-peppered jaw, painfully aware of his heart, breaking. He’s suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to sit at his desk and write, his emotions surging up to his throat and flooding his brain with hot angry words. “It seems like just yesterday you were… naked in Dad’s bed.”

Red sheets, vibrant like Erik’s mad desire.

Charles replies, “I was, actually.”

Erik makes a choked noise of disgust. Charles is blushing at himself.

“Fuck’s _sake_ Charles.”

“I’m sorry; I couldn’t help myself.”

Charles placates him immediately, stroking at his hair.

“Sorry,” he repeats. Then he says, “I mean—I really am sorry. It must’ve been awful for you. Having to put up with me.” He pauses to chuckle. “I still remember how much you hated me.”

Erik bites his tongue.

“I’m sleepy,” he feigns a yawn. “Turn off the light.”

Charles flicks off the switch and casts darkness in his bedroom.

“Goodnight, Erik.”

He says nothing back.

“Not going to move to the pillow?”

He throws an arm over the boy’s waist.

“No,” he decides.

His lips brush Charles’s throat, subtle enough to be an accident.

Charles tilts his head and props a kiss on Erik’s forehead, long enough to be deliberate.

They could do this forever, really. A kiss here and a touch there, but never a word to say about any.

Erik feels heavy over him, but the boy doesn’t complain. Maybe his laboured breaths are for a different reason.

He wants to nuzzle his neck, lick across his collarbones, tug at an earlobe with biting teeth. He would let Charles where he’s let no man or woman go before. He’d do to Charles what he’s certain his father has never dared to, and that thought makes him want to shoot himself in the head, if he’s honest.

Still.

He clings to the boy like a child desperate for body warmth in the cold. Who’s the boy now, he thinks. Charles’s hand in his hair has slowed to simply dragging his fingers up and down.

It’s putting him slowly back to sleep, much as he doesn’t want to. He can’t fight what Charles is giving him.   

“You’re heavy,” Charles breathes, even though it’s been over an hour, and Erik has successfully pretended to be inert with sleep the whole time. “You’re too heavy, Erik.”

He waits for Charles to push him away, but he doesn’t. Guiltily, he remains lain.

The boy simply continues to finger his hair.

More minutes pass with both of them still awake. Charles gives up.

He turns, slowly, a hand still in his hair while one keeps him braced around the waist. Charles turns to lay on his side but still keeps Erik against him. He rearranges the covers around them and pulls Erik closer to his chest.

Erik’s arm hangs over Charles’s hip, and gently, the boy shifts it upwards. Satisfied with their position, perhaps, he continues to run his fingers through Erik’s hair. Erik continues to be asleep. It’s perfect, because this is what it would be like if they were lovers. Even after all these months apart, he can remember how it feels to be in a moment and imagine them as lovers in it. He can remember how devastating it feels.

Charles traces patterns on his head. He plays with the long strands, curly around the ends. When Charles sleeps, his fingers are tangled in the bunches of his hair, his palm loosely cupping Erik’s neck.

\---

His alarm goes off too soon.

The boy’s dream is disturbed by the high pitch of it. His eyeballs have been rolling back and forth beneath his eyelids, a frown on his mouth and brows, all of which slowly fade as he wakes up.

Erik backs away from him slowly, making sure the distance between them is decent before Charles’s eyes open. When an arm’s length of space leaves them both cold, Erik realises his erection is too prominent to go unseen, so he instead sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, his back to the boy. He moves the covers to his waist.

“Morning,” Charles murmurs, yawning.

Erik doesn’t say anything back.

“Yes, morning to me too,” Charles drones to himself. “Will you take tea or coffee?”

A refusal of both is on his tongue, but then he thinks it would be rather convenient if Charles left the room.

“Any,” he says, reaching for his phone to check his emails.

“Oh,” the boy voices. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

Charles leaves the room, and soon after, Erik shuffles into the restroom to strip off and bathe. He jerks off silently, torn between wanting to bite into his arm and using both hands to pump his cock. In the end he varies it, though the silence is more necessary, so he ends up leaving the shower with a welt on his arm.

When he re-enters his bedroom, Charles is making the bed. A mug rests on the side table.

“I won’t be long,” Charles mutters, scooping up his duffel bag as he skitters past him to the restroom. “Don’t dry your hair,” he calls out, before shutting the door.

Knowing that Charles is in his home, using his restroom, is distracting. He picks out one of his favourite three-piece suits and lays it out on the bed. He changes into the black slacks and is pulling an undershirt over his head when Charles knocks on the restroom door.

“May I come in? Are you decent?”

Chuckling, Erik says, “Decent.”

There’s no movement.

“You’re laughing,” he points out. “Are you definitely clothed?”

“Yes, I’m definitely clothed,” he assures him, trying not to laugh as he splashes on aftershave.

The door opens with wafts of steam, and Charles timidly steps out in a black pair of jeans and a red jumper.

“You haven’t even _touched_ your tea,” is the first thing he says.

“I’m waiting for it to warm.” He sits down on the bed and reaches for the mug, and then realises that the small, brief smile on Charles’s face is because Jakob always says that too.

Charles goes to his dressing table and fetches a comb and scissors, then gets to work untangling Erik’s hair. This time, his hands and movements are dextrous, and he’s learned not to come too close. He’s learned to hold his breath and not blow it over him, to wipe him with the towel and not his fingers, to look at the mirror in front instead of facing him nose-to-nose. It’s as clinically detached as a professional haircut, but what had he expected?

Then Charles spots the bruise on his arm while brushing him down and startles.

“Erik,” he says shakily, “How did this happen?”

He thinks about it.

Teeth marks are too evident.

“Must’ve done it while sleeping,” he answers flippantly, standing up on his feet.

“I would’ve seen you do that,” Charles says.

“Would you have? Were you staring at me the whole night?”

Charles blushes as he collects the hair on the bed.

“Don’t shout at me Erik, I’m just concerned.”

“I don’t need you to be concerned,” he spats. Now in a hurry to leave, he tosses on his button down carelessly. And of course, that troubles Charles.

“Let me iron that for you, it’s all creased.”

“I don’t have time.”

“It’ll only take me a minute.”

“Charles, _please_. If you don’t want me to shout, don’t push it.”

Sometimes he thinks that if they were lovers, they’d have nothing to argue about. Late or not, he’d let Charles stand over the ironing board and neatly press his shirt while he wraps his arms around the boy’s waist and busses kisses up and down his neck. He’d smell his own body wash, because they’re lovers. He’d taste his own sweat, because they’re lovers. His senses, every single one of them, vibrant—because they’re lovers.

He fiddles with his tie until it’s a passable knot. Charles’s disapproval is palpable.

Erik watches through the mirror as the boy glances towards the unfinished mug of tea on the side table. He doesn’t comment.

Strangely, Charles’s phone doesn’t ring.

“Not going to call Dad?” he asks, straightening his vest.

“In a while,” Charles mumbles, but he doesn’t look at the clock, or peruse for his phone.

It’s never really occurred to him that Charles and Jakob could be having issues.

He knows he’s tied down to a long day today, and if the presentation goes well, drinks at the bar will be perfunctory. He just doesn’t understand if it’s necessary to tell his guest this.

“I might be late,” is all he says on the matter. “Don’t wait up.”

“Oh,” Charles says to that, pulling the sleeves of his jumper up to his knuckles. “I was sort of hoping we could go out, but…”

Erik continues to keep himself distracted. He watches Charles through the mirror, only fleetingly, fearful that they could make eye contact and Erik would crumble.

“There are lots of nice places here, I’ve heard,” Charles continues. “And I don’t mind waiting, we could go late.”

“Sorry,” Erik mutters. “Another time.” He places his suit jacket over his arm as he scrambles for his things—a lighter, some folders, his endlessly inked ball pen, and his briefcase. Charles sits on his bed, blocking the way to the drawers where his cigarette packs lay.

“Charles, pass me a pack from the top drawer.”

He continues to stubbornly look at the ground. Like he’d expected Erik to spend the whole day with him, or at the very least, leave without arguing with him.

Charles’s expectations of him are almost distressing.

Almost.

“Charles,” Erik repeats. “The cigarettes in the top drawer, by your legs. Pass me one please.”

The boy blinks out of his daze and turns his head to the side as though he’s ready to carry out Erik’s request. The drawer opens, but he pauses to think, hand poised over a pack.

“Hurry up. I’m getting late.”

“You smoke too much,” Charles comments. “Too much, Erik. You ought to start quitting. Have you thought about quitting?” He turns to look at him brightly, full of hope. “I could help you.”

It’s easier to stalk towards the drawer and pick out three packs instead. He stuffs them in his pockets, dispersed. One in the breast pocket, one in the side, and one at the back.

“I just said something, Erik.”

“I don’t give a shit about what you just said.”

A long, agonised sigh.

“You’re so bloody _difficult_ , you know that?”

“All I asked you was to give me the fucking cigarettes,” Erik barks back. “Is that so hard?”

“Yes, it _is_! You’re asking me to give you something that’s damaging your body, harming you—”

“Oh _enough_ with that fake concern. _Nobody_ fucking cares. Do you understand me?”

Charles stares up at him.

“Nobody cares about me. You think I would be living like this if someone cared? You think I’d be this _depressed_ if someone fucking cared?”

“I care,” Charles almost exclaims, standing up. His eyes are watery. His hands as fisted by his side. “I care about you.”

“No,” Erik retorts. “No. It’s not me you care about.”

Charles angrily pushes him back.

“You _idiot._ I care about you, I always have!”

“Why? Because my father’s fucking you, right?!”

He thinks that Charles is going to yell. That he’s succeeded in bringing Charles to his tipping point. Erik even takes a step back.

But the boy doesn’t break anything. He doesn’t use his voice, let alone raise it.

He sits back down on the bed, then drops his head in his arms. Three, four seconds later, he picks it up and takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says.

This is new, Erik thinks.

No ugly crying face to behold. No tears, just a quiet acceptance of—what, he doesn’t know. Erik’s rage, maybe, because that’s all that Charles has been presented with today.

“Aren’t you getting late for work.”

There’s no question in his tone. It’s all flat, plain.

Erik pushes his hair back, forgetting that it’s cut.

He reaches for his phone and readjusts his suit jacket, hand clammy around the handle of his briefcase.

What has he done to the boy, he wonders, as he leaves for work.

The presentation goes exceptionally well, but he doesn’t go out for drinks.

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised to come home to find the flat empty. The fact that it’s completely clean, vacuumed floors and scrubbed counters, doesn’t come as a shock.

He misses the boy so much it numbs him. He feels wooden, stepping into his bedroom, early for the first time in a long while. He doesn’t reek of cigarettes. His breath smells of the tea Charles had made him this morning.

If not for his pride and his pain, he would’ve called Jakob and asked him if Charles has safely reached home. Jakob would undoubtedly be back from work by now, and he’d have found Charles at maybe this exact point in time, curled up on the sofa with a book, perhaps. And he’d ask him what’s wrong and Charles would be polite enough not to divulge that he had an argument with his son and that he’d been _insulted_ by him. No.

He’d say that everything is dandy, perfectly perfect, and Jakob would smile warmly at him. They are lovers, so Jakob would put his arms around him and place their lips together.

And if Charles fell asleep on the sofa while reading, Jakob could tuck a blanket around him or carry him to the bed or kiss his soft lips. Because they are lovers.

\---

The next few days he focuses on trying not to cut his skin or overdose or jump off the balcony wall.

But sometimes he sees a line of blood trail down his jaw while shaving and he wonders when Charles will come running through the door.

Depressed. Suicidal. Lonely.

The whole fucking lot.

\---

He does travel.

He boards the train, doesn’t check where it’s headed to, and puts his head against the glass as it thrums with movement. He sleeps best in public transport now.

Sometimes everyone looks like Charles.

The person reading from their electronic gadget, the one who stands at the doors and jerks when they slide open, even the teenager who comes and sits next to him.

Today, the person who holds the elevator for him resembles Charles. As does the man he bumps into on the way out. And so on. Then there’s the figure sitting at the door of his flat, knees up to his chin, hair long dark waves.

Erik rubs his eyes. The boy stands up, his eyes so blue and beautiful that Erik feels ridiculous for thinking they could’ve been in anyone else.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, swallowing nervously.

Charles shivers.

“I’m sorry,” he begins with a sad whisper, tugging on his t-shirt. Erik is far too relieved to hear his voice and see his face, initially, to notice how much distraught is tainting both. “I know you hate me but I have nowhere else to go,” the boy continues, trying _so_ hard not to cry that it’s ridiculously obvious. He looks up at the ceiling, lips pursed, and clenches his jaw when a tear makes its way down. “Sorry,” he says again, the sound of it completely inaudible.

“What happened?” Erik asks, placing a foot forward. “Just—come inside.” He rummages for his key and quickly lets Charles inside, shutting the door behind him when he enters. Erik walks towards the kitchen, but Charles is standing by the wall against the door. Erik realises he isn’t going to be followed, so he walks back. He stops when he’s facing the boy and speaks once his tears have been brushed away. “What happened, Charles, tell me.”

A glance sideways, then, “Jakob broke up with me.”

Erik stares at him dumbly.

“He broke up with me,” Charles repeats, then he lets loose. He cries with abandon.

“Why,” Erik rasps. His ears are ringing. Charles only gets louder. He takes the boy’s hands away from his face and squeezes his wrists. “Stop crying and tell me _why_. Why did he break up with you?”

There’s no way the boy can continue to wail and breathe at the same time, but he’s trying, grief working its way down his throat. Erik shakes him like a ragdoll. Charles’s head tips back like he’s lost control of it.

“I’ll call Dad and ask him if you don’t fucking tell me.” He releases his wrists and wipes Charles’s face frantically. “Stop crying stop fucking _crying_ and speak! Tell me—”

“He said…” Erik nods as Charles breathes in to speak, rubbing his tears away. “He said he can’t be with me anymore.”

Erik shakes his head, confused. His hand is automatically reaching for his phone in his jeans. “I’ll talk to him. Was he drunk? Don’t worry, I’ll talk to him.”

Charles reaches for his hand and stops him.

“He said he’s lost everything because of me, Erik.”

He frowns. “What does he mean by that?”

Charles could be mistaken. He can’t, Jakob can’t just—

“What he means is… he’s lost everything important to him. His friends, he said. His job, his respect, his reputation.” Charles hesitantly looks up at him with wet lashes. “His family. You.”

Erik holds his head. “He’s crazy,” he hisses out.

“He’s right,” Charles admits. “All of his friends hate me. They think Jakob is a disgusting pervert. They _bully_ him now, Erik.”

He doesn’t say anything.

“More people found out, and… more people deride him. He’s been fired, did you know that? Someone filed a complaint claiming that he’s a sexual predator. The rumours—the things they say are sickening, Erik.”

“I didn’t know,” Erik whispers.

“Because Jakob didn’t tell you,” Charles sniffs. “Because he didn’t want you to know. He’s not as happy as he pretends to be, Erik. He’s devastated that you left. And he _knows_ it’s because you hate me.”

Then there are new tears, another pain, more hurt.

“I don’t hate you,” Erik says weakly.

“ _Everyone_ hates me,” Charles grieves, dismissing Erik’s words. “Everyone. Even my own parents. Of course Jakob would tell me to leave. I’m not worth it, am I? I’m not—” Charles breaks off when he chokes on a sob. “I’m not worth everything he’s lost. I thought… I thought I’d be, maybe… that— _god_ , how could I be so _wrong_?”

Small pale hands fist in his hair. He wheezes, breathless, but when Erik steps forward for him, he turns him down. He shakes his head and recovers by himself, wiping his tears away.

“Charles—listen to me—”

“You,” Charles huffs, jabbing a finger into Erik’s chest. “You hate me the _most_. Nine months went by and you didn’t ask about me once, you didn’t come see me once, you didn’t even make the effort to _call_. Each day I waited, but… you didn’t think of me once, did you?” The boy’s eyes are soaked and reddened but they’re still boring into Erik critically. “A fucking haircut. The only time you needed me was for a fucking haircut. But I came the next day, didn’t I? The next flight here I _came_ to you and I cut your damned hair and I held you all night but it didn’t make a difference, did it? You still hate me and you always will and I can’t _sleep_ at night when I think about you.”

Erik waits for Charles to catch his breath.

Stupid boy.

“Stupid, stupid boy.”

Now he just looks angry, all his tears gone.

But Erik doesn’t give him a chance.

“I don’t hate you,” he enunciates this very carefully, stepping closer to Charles. His hands go up to his shoulders. “You have no idea, do you? You really don’t have a clue.”

“What?” Charles questions, breathless with curiosity.

“How it feels to love someone so much it ruins you—brings the _worst_ out of you. Your aggression, your worst habits, your desire to be suspended in isolation. Do you know what it feels like?”

Charles’s chest heaves.

“Do you know what it feels like to be loved by someone who would die for you?”

The boy slowly gives his head a shake. He looks so spooked it’s endearing. And Erik has never felt so liberated.

He takes Charles’s unsteady hand between his own and holds it delicately as it tremors.

“I don’t hate you, Charles. I’m in love with you. And _I_ would die for you.”

Charles is as still as a mannequin. He’s wiped clean of any expression.

So when Erik lets go of his hand, the boy moves so fast it’s alarming.

He kisses him on the mouth.

And it’s such an unkind kiss.

Charles is pressing up into him, hard, with all the brutal force in the world. His hands are around Erik’s neck. One long squeeze and he’d be done.

He doesn’t care.

Nails claw at his skin, but he doesn’t care.

Their lips slide together messily. Their lips _drag_ against each other. Erik tilts his head again and again as their mouths meet in all directions. They both open slowly. Erik circles Charles in his arms tight enough to torture. He grips his shirt like he’s hanging off it from a cliff. He pulls his hair. He holds his chin. Charles licks him first. Erik licks back, their mouths sodden. He’s the first to lock him between teeth. Unrelentingly, he bites the boy’s bottom lip. He bites until he knows he’s about to tear skin, and backs away just then.

Charles makes so many sounds.

His nose is pressed against Erik’s cheek when he sucks in air.

Erik is vigorously licking into his mouth, into everywhere. He tastes blood. Charles’s lips turn up in a smile so short it’s _sweet_.

The boy’s tongue slithers into his mouth.

Now Erik is moaning, stroking down the length of Charles’s wet tongue with the tip of his own. Saliva escapes. Lashes flutter. Breaths stutter. Charles grips him closer. Erik presses Charles back against the wall and flicks his tongue underneath Charles’s. He opens his eyes and reciprocates. Erik feels the eyes on him and meets them, close as they are, with their mouths pressed. Blue eyes are ignited.

Taking his lips off is impossible.

It’s easier to slide his lips down the side of the boy’s face, to tongue his dimples and nip at his chin, then roam down to his neck. He hooks a finger into the boy’s shirt to pull down the neckline and reveal more skin, a longer path for his mouth.

He licks across his collarbones.

He presses his lips down on his pulse point and breathes in a mingled scent. A soapy-rosy scent.

Slowly, his hands reach up to press against his chest through his shirt. Palms against pectorals, he shifts his hands down, down to the hem of his shirt, which he gently rolls up.

He goes down onto his knees.

Charles’s legs part to give him space. He pants in short rasps. His hands are up against the wall as though there are imaginary shackles pinning his wrists up next to his head.

Erik unbuckles the boy’s belt.

He opens the first button of his jeans, then stops. He stares at the boy’s belly button and the fine hairs beneath that lead a soft trail to his groin.

Erik doesn’t unzip his jeans just yet. He can see Charles is without underwear. He slowly pulls down the top of his jeans lower down on his hips, exposing him just a little bit further.

The boy shuts his eyes and arches his neck.

He leans forward to place the point of his tongue inside Charles’s little belly button, drawing out a throaty gasp, before he places the flat of his tongue against Charles’s skin and drags it down, until he reaches the boy’s zipper. Aware of Charles’s nudity beneath, he tugs the zip down with care. The hair on his groin is darker and thicker, but evidently trimmed. Erik licks him there as well, where he tastes just as clean.

They barely speak. Every sound made is unintentional.

Charles probably isn’t expecting to moan as loudly and clearly as he does when Erik shucks his jeans down to his knees and rubs his face against his cock. His cheek is slightly coarse from a day’s stubble and his mouth is swollen.

Charles’s cock is attractively small and pink, or so it seems, before he lifts it into his mouth and sucks on it.

Then it grows, gets heavier and heavier on his tongue, and when Erik takes it out, it’s much larger and darker. He rubs his mouth against it knowing Charles will moan. Erik craves for all of him, tip to root, filling his mouth—so he attempts to take him again; breathing in deeply and clutching Charles’s thighs. His cock twitches upwards when Erik suckles eagerly on his head, drinking the drops of his juice and keeping his mouth moistened. The tangy taste is unexpected, and not unpleasant.

Charles places his hands in his hair.

And that’s the only thing that’s familiar, so far, compelling Erik to pause and relive the comfort.

Charles has never done it while gasping. Still, his fingers are delicate.

Erik bites into Charles’s hip and milk-white skin flushes.

Yet the boy’s fingers remain gentle.

His mouth opens for Charles’s cock, and the first half of it slides in smoothly.

Then Erik discovers that he doesn’t have much of a gag reflex, so he continues to let his length fill him. His throat closes up and he spends a moment to relax it, indulging Charles with the undulations of his lapping tongue, dripping wet now that he can’t momentarily swallow.

Erik’s lips are a ring around his girth, and he presses them down to make them slide over and over as he moves his head up and down. Charles holds him by the head, his other hand stroking his neck, and then tilts his hips forward.

The movement is particular, like Charles has discovered the most apt position for his cock to fit easier into Erik’s mouth. From then, the rhythm comes naturally. Charles’s hips—slightly curved but narrow for the most part—roll forward slowly, lazily, into Erik’s mouth, entering and exiting the cave of his throat with a relaxed efficiency.

The boy’s noises never drop.

His whimpers have a soft cadence, hypnotic for Erik, who wants to hear every lilt and gasp and shout of Charles’s pleasure.

He wants him for life.

“I’m going to come,” Charles moans out, his pace staggering. “Erik.”

He nods, holding Charles still by his hips. He slips off of his cock and licks a stripe downwards and up his shaft, sucks on his slit, then probes at the sheathing skin of his head, before recapturing his thick cock in his mouth.

Then Charles is kicking off his jeans and slipping out of his shoes. Erik looks down in befuddlement before a leg is swung over his shoulder. Charles’s heel is against Erik’s back, his thigh presses against Erik’s cheek, and his thrusts are more regular.

But there’s so much skin that Erik is caught off guard, and he has to reach forward to palm at Charles’s smooth planes and lean muscles. He cups the curve of his arse and lifts him up against the wall until he’s standing, and Charles is above him on his shoulder, his back to the wall and his head nearly touching the ceiling.

He gasps sharply, clutching for the wall and Erik both, but he can’t protest for all his efforts when Erik resumes his unravelling of Charles’s pleasure. Now he’s practically hoisted in the air, naked barring the rucked-up t-shirt and socks, and thrill should be fluttering in his gut, heightening his orgasm.

The way he screams into the walls, quaking bodily and depending on Erik to swallow his release then relieve him from too much sensitivity and finally, hold him tenderly and bring him back down—

It’s distressingly, achingly perfect.

Charles wraps his legs around Erik’s waist as he’s lowered, which allows his arms to loop around Erik’s shoulders, and conveniently, let their mouths meet again.

Their kiss is tired and lazy. Charles’s lips require some healing, and Erik’s are sore. But the desperate hope to tangle their tongues again takes its toll on them both.

Words need to be said.

They can’t evade the reality of what they’ve done and what they’re doing.

But as far as Erik’s concerned, he’s simply pulling the boy against his chest to rub his back soothingly, as remembered, while the boy drops his head heavily on Erik’s shoulder and allows himself to be taken to Erik’s bedroom.

To be placed on the bed, gazed at ruefully, and then slowly joined.

As though they’re lovers.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter is here, folks! :)
> 
> A big thank you to all of my readers for commenting and giving kudos and generally being so lovely and patient. 
> 
> A HUGE, MASSIVE thank you to Cat, aka **treasuredleisure** , for not only being extremely kind to a complete newbie of the fandom, but also for helping me write, giving me encouragement and always being there to offer guidance. ALL THE LOVE. 
> 
> Anyway, onward!

Erik can’t take the boy off his mind, like he can’t take his taste off his tongue.

On his back, he looks like a wet dream, his shirt still bunched up at his chest, hard pink nipples heaving as he breathes. His cock lays soft and small against a thigh, where marks of teeth are waiting to be bitten in.

God, Erik can look at every part of him but his eyes—those siren eyes, bright and loud alerts of danger. He can take in his shapely legs, dote over skin populated with freckles, splay his hands over a flat, rippling stomach, but he can’t direct his gaze on those eyes. They know exactly what he wants after months of knowing nothing. And if that isn’t danger, than he himself knows nothing.

But _Charles_ , Charles could be given the most enormous power in the world and he’d still be the soft, guileless creature you’d trust with your heart. Lock and key and treasure, he’d have it all.

Erik sits on the bed heavily, feeling hollow from the inside. Everything. Charles has everything.

The boy rises to his knees, fluid, and moves towards him slowly. Like he’s overthinking it, casting himself in slow-motion as he wonders what he’s doing.

It’s too late anyway. Charles seems to know before him.

He’s too perfect, Erik thinks. He takes off his t-shirt the rest of the way and throws it onto the floor, the dejected, rejected pile of cloth, and Erik’s eyes follow it interestedly until his chin is being held and his face is being turned.

The sockets of blue are astounding after staring at a t-shirt, and he blinks a few times to adjust.

I’ve written so much about these eyes, he thinks, that they don’t even make sense anymore. Deconstructed into something much more complex than they actually are, they sit in his face purely to hypnotise him.

At first it’s all slow, dreamy and long-drawn, a kiss on his mouth that’s like sucking out nectar from a flower, then a careful grip around his waist that has them falling against the sheets. The pillow under his head feels nowhere as soft as Charles's kiss, his touch, his breathing.

Then, there’s movement. Sudden, vicious, desperate.

He’s undressed with hands and teeth and orders. He submits with duty.

Charles brings his knee between Erik’s.

He licks his palm and grips Erik’s cock, then they roll in the sheets, Charles finding his seat on top of him.

They should stop.

They should stop and talk.

How much more can they delay their inevitable regret?

Any moment now Jakob is likely realising that he’s made a grave mistake. He could be on his way right this second, long speech of apology memorised—

Charles grips him with both hands.

“I _need_ you,” the boy breathes.

His knees flank him, sweaty thighs stuck to his hips, breath wafting over his open mouth.

“Look at me,” Charles finally urges, jerking at his cock frenetically. “Look at me.”

He looks, and sees: a wild, raw intensity to the way pupils darken his eyes and eclipse the blue, a picturesque beauty to the parting of his lips as they shape his name, and far too little space between them. Finally.

Erik bucks off the bed and fucks into Charles’s fists. The boy bends like a bow, rubbing the tip of Erik’s cock against the taut skin of his torso. Grazing a nipple, tracing his bony sternum, squeezed and milked until he splatters all over Charles’s throat and chest.

And Charles loves it.

Erik grabs him with two large hands and flips them over again.

The boy is grinning, flushed and wanton, wearing Erik’s thick pleasure on his naked skin without shame.

He leans over the boy on his elbows and dives for his mouth.

Erik whorls his tongue relentlessly.

“Do you know,” he breathes out against his red lips, sucking on their swell, “Do you know how much I love you?”

Charles’s smile dies. He shuts his mouth, even as Erik attempts to prod it open. 

“Open up for me.”

The boy parts his legs and his lips.

Erik grips him by his wrists, trapping him.

“I’ve ached for so long,” he murmurs, mouth over Charles’s. “Did you ever think it would be you?”

Small pale fingers run through the sticky mess on his skin.

“I always wanted it to be me.”

Erik pulls Charles’s hair in a show of unbridled affection.

“Liar,” he utters, tugging.

“I wanted to be the only person who could save you. I’m so—I’m so selfish, aren’t I?”

Erik bites Charles’s wrist.

“I wanted it to be me. Your knight in shining armour. Your light at the end of the tunnel.”

“You want to save everyone.” He mutters each word with a bite here, a kiss there. Licking to taste and raking his teeth. “How can you expect me to not fall in love with you?”

He’s only human.

And Charles is the angel, isn’t he?

He drags his fingertips down Charles’s back.

“You once dreamt you were trying to hold my hand.”

“And you held it,” Erik recalls, tracing spirals with the buds of his thumbs.

“What else do you dream of?”

Erik pecks Charles on his sweet lips. The boy licks them, waiting.

“Tell me, Erik. Tell me everything.”

With tears, he does.

\---

Erik rouses first the next morning.

He leaves the door open as he showers. He’d awoken Charles already with a kiss, and isn’t surprised to hear the curtains rustle as someone steps in behind him.

He opens his eyes and sees small pale hands link at his waist. The boy’s head rests between Erik’s shoulder blades.

“Good morning,” Charles greets him, placing a long kiss on his shoulder.

Erik pulls Charles around so he can face him.

“Did you sleep well?” he asks, kissing his brow.

“Really well,” Charles yawns wide. Erik reaches for the shampoo bottle and pours some onto his palm as the boy wets his hair under the shower. “Are you going to wash my hair?”

“Yes,” Erik says as he starts to massage the scented shampoo into Charles’s damp hair. The boy shuts his eyes and smiles, holding Erik’s biceps for balance.

There’s a hint of disbelief and honest surprise in Charles’s expression, especially when he cracks an eye open to gaze up at Erik as he’s being rinsed.

Like he’s never expected Erik to be so affectionate. Like this interaction is a novelty. 

He supposes Charles has been given reason to be sceptical in his expectations.

He really doesn’t know after all.

Charles is standing in his bedroom, arms spread, being towelled down by Erik. He’s down on one knee, drying each of the boy’s legs and Charles is commenting, “You’re treating me like a child,” with a bright beautiful smile and a wet giggle, when Erik’s phone rings.

He heaves a sigh when he reads the name blinking on his screen.

“It’s Dad,” he informs.

“Don’t pick up,” Charles pleads. “Erik please don’t, promise me—”

The phone stops bleeping.

Charles sighs.

“I can’t believe him. I can’t believe he just let you go,” Erik admits dolefully, placing his phone back on the bed and sitting back on his heels.

“He was helpless,” Charles replies after a while, looking to his side.

“No.” Erik shakes his head. “Helpless is someone who doesn’t have you.”

It’s strange.

He can say everything—bring every hidden thought of his mind to his tongue.

And he can say it without fearing for his life.

The boy places his hand on Erik’s head.

“Is that so,” he whispers softly, a hidden smile in his voice.

“I know from experience.”

Over a year of it.

Erik kisses up the boy’s arm until he can reach no higher.

He moves his face to press it against Charles’s stomach.

“Over a year of it,” he adds.

He can say it, and he will.

“I love you,” he completes. “I don’t think I ever won’t.”

And he’s not saying it to make Charles stay.

“I’m _really_ not saying this to make you stay. You can leave…”

Even though—

“It would hurt me, but…”

He swallows.

The boy murmurs, “What if I want to stay?”

Erik grips Charles’s hips tight, fingers digging in.

“Then stay. Stay forever.”

Even if it is outrageous.

It’s barely been a day.

But Charles, here, forever—

There has to be a reason why these past thirteen months have been hellish.

_You suffer but it’s worth it._

To live with someone you would die for.

It’s worth thirteen more.

There are goosebumps under his lips.

He inhales Charles’s nearness another time before moving off to find them clothes.

His smallest, tightest pair of boxers lie somewhere in the back of his drawers, and he scrounges the pair out for Charles to wear. He laughs as he turns and gives Erik a glance of his rear, where the material stretches neatly over his arse. Erik leans forward and kisses his lower back—his skin is slightly chilled, so he goes on to look for something Charles can wear on top.

He finds a large blue turtleneck jumper and presents it to Charles, who gives his approval with a small smile. Erik tugs it down the boy’s head and arms, folds down the neck so Charles can breathe, and begins to do the same for his sleeves, but Charles shakes his head.

“I like it,” he insists, so Erik lets the sleeves dangle heavily from the boy’s small pale hands. Then he asks, “Are you going to work?”

Erik pauses from where he’s rummaging for clothes of his own.

“Yes,” he sighs, not meeting Charles’s gaze. How desperate would Charles think he is, if he stays. “I have a very important meeting I can’t miss.”

“Okay.”

Charles walks over to him and pecks him on the cheek, swinging his arms around his shoulders to place his hands over Erik’s chest.

“I’ll make breakfast, hm?” Then he takes Erik’s hand for a kiss, tugging on it as he leaves but letting go when the distance is too far. Erik watches him walk out of the bedroom, his indecent brat indecently dressed, and wonders if Charles is even looking for the space that Erik wants to offer him.

Still.

By the time he’s dressed, Charles is burning something in the kitchen and flapping wildly at the smoke.

“It’s alright!” he exclaims. “Just overcooked some toast, nothing major.” He glances over at Erik as he walks towards him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?” Erik asks, cupping Charles’s face. The boy looks up sheepishly.

“Like you’d rather eat me instead.”

Erik bends to kiss him and kisses him deep, cornering Charles against the counter. When he removes his mouth, the boy’s lips are still wet and open, his eyes still shut. Erik dives in for another, a hand slipping underneath the boy’s jumper to grope at his skin. Charles shivers and ducks his head, his torso rippling away from his hand as though he’s ticklish. The side of the boy’s foot slowly rubs up and down Erik’s calf.

Charles still hasn’t asked Erik to take the day off and stay. But he does look disappointed as he fixes Erik’s tie for him.

“You look very nice,” Charles tells him.

“Thank you.” Erik’s mouth twitches upwards.

“You always do.” The boy lifts and drops a shoulder, casual. Erik’s smile spreads to a full grin. “Don’t act like you didn’t already know that.” The boy flushes charmingly.

“I didn’t know you thought I looked good,” Erik reiterates, pushing Charles’s hair back from his forehead and tipping his chin up. He never dresses for the delight of others and what they might see, but in his profession he cares about presentation and looking sharp. Yet Charles has been appreciating him—not just anyone, _Charles_ —and it alters his motives just a little.

“Grey really suits you.” Charles runs his hands down his lapels. He repeats the motion before leaning in to whisper into Erik’s ear, “I’m sure everywhere you go, people notice you.” He heaves a sigh, fingering Erik’s top button. “Smile at you, stare at you, try and touch you, fantasize about you… they do that, I’ll bet. How many times do you find someone’s number slipped into your pocket?”

In reply, he buries his face in Charles’s neck and nips at his skin.

“Never cared,” he claims. “They weren’t you.”

“All that time went by… surely you had—a few, or maybe… you must have returned _someone’s_ interest… right?”

The boy’s breath hitches when Erik sucks at him, viciously.

“Wrong.” He works his way up to find Charles’s licked lips. “Nobody did to me what you do.”

Erik sinks into his mouth, warm tongue finding a welcome, then he laps across Charles’s mouth as though he’s collecting its taste, both inside and out.

Charles forgets to inhale. He fists his hands in Erik’s hair and pants when they break apart.

“Breakfast,” Charles is flustered as he reminds them, wiping his mouth and moving towards the hob. “I know what you’re trying to do. I’m not letting you go to work without eating.”

Erik hasn’t had an edible breakfast in months—usually a cigarette will do to keep his mouth busy until coffee break. Involuntarily, he pats his pockets for a box of cigarettes or a stray stick. From where he’s plating their food, Charles turns around just in time to see.

He bites his lip and turns back to the food.

Erik thinks of the drawer in his bedroom.

_You shouldn’t—it’s bad for you._

_It’s your breath._

“Looks good,” Erik says, placing his head on Charles’s shoulder as the boy smiles in thanks.

“Sit down, I’ll bring it for you.”

Erik presses a hard kiss on Charles’s clean-shaven jaw before he goes to sit on a stool, pulling his sleeves up. Charles seats himself to his right, close enough to let their thighs touch.

“What time will you be back?” he asks, wordlessly cutting up a golden omelette and bringing it in front of Erik’s mouth.

“… By five,” he informs, before the fork passes his lips and forces him to take a bite. The next morsel finds its way to his mouth, and the one that follows, as does the tissue that wipes him and ensures his suit remains clean. “You’re not eating,” Erik points out.

“I’ll eat when you go,” Charles says cheerfully, readying another mouthful on the fork’s blades. “I want you to eat first. You hardly ever eat.”

Erik holds Charles’s hand steady as he’s fed. The boy looks on adoringly.

And every portion that’s brought to his lips is accepted without objection, and with a smile.

Charles soaks up the sight of his happiness avidly, eyes darting everywhere with wonder.

“You’re so different now,” he breathes, quiet. When Erik’s gaze slowly drifts up to meet his, he’s blushing and turning away.

Matching him in boldness, Erik remarks, “Because you’re not Dad’s boyfriend anymore.”

It sounds just as relieving aloud.

And now it’s true, it’s real; there’s no protest.

He’s slipping down from the stool when Charles looks up at him and says, “What if I was yours?”

Then he reaches out and interlocks their fingers, slowly, the sides of his fingers grazing Erik’s and parting them, then curling down to fold their hands together.

Erik watches, inert.

“What if I was your boyfriend, Erik?” He lets out an uneven breath. “And we had this every day?”

He stands frozen. Charles toys with his fingers futilely, waiting for a reaction.

“Have I spoken too soon?” The boy bites his lip. “I know it’s fast, but… I’ve never been so _sure_. I’ve never known anyone could even love me as much as you do. How much more can I make you wait?”

Heavy, charged silence settles into every corner of the room.

Charles’s grip eventually falters, and he instead wrings his own hands restlessly. Then he stands and goes to collect Erik’s briefcase.

“Just—maybe—you could think about it at work…”

He presses the briefcase against Erik’s chest.

“Here.”

Erik takes it and puts it back down.

“It doesn’t matter how long I have to wait,” he begins, voice firm. “As long as you’re ready. As long as you’re happy.”

He cups Charles’s face with both hands. The boy places his hands over Erik’s.

“When you close your eyes and think of us, together…”

“Yes…”

The boy breathes a soft sigh and closes his eyes.

“You don’t even know, Charles. The things I would do for you. The way I have ached for you. You can’t imagine what it would be like to finally have me.”

“I would have to find out.”

Charles slowly opens his eyes. Wet blue glistens, looking up at him dreamily.

“Can you handle all of my love? You can leave through that door anytime you want, Charles. You can have _anyone_ you want. But I will never have any love to give anyone else. It’s all for you.” He grabs Charles harder. “ _All_ for you.”

The boy swallows, tipping his head back into Erik’s hands and elongating his throat. He shuts his eyes again, a tear sliding down to his chin. But his face is completely peaceful.

Erik brushes his tear away with his thumb.

“I’ll wait,” he promises. “I’ll give you time.”

He takes a step back and withdraws, hands falling. Charles’s eyes snap open.

“What? Why—I don’t need time.” He frowns. “I don’t want to wait.”

“You should think about it.”

It’s barely been a day.

His father has loved him too, hasn’t he? He could have said the same words, held him the same way, looked at him with the same expression in his blue-grey eyes— 

Assertively, he says, “You need time.”

But his voice cracks.

He turns away, whipping off his suit jacket and tossing it on the stool he’d vacated.

“Think about what you really want.”

A moment later he turns back around to find Charles with his back to him, arms holding his suit jacket to his chest. Erik takes a step towards him and kisses his shoulder, his neck, then the soft, wet skin of his cheek.

With that, he leaves to go to his bedroom.

It’s not like they’ll have the meeting without him anyway.

\---

He could really do with a cigarette.

His skin prickles like it feels betrayed;

With nothing and nobody to put against his mouth and breathe in and breathe out and _intoxicate_ himself with.

The door slowly creaks open.

Charles pads in, one sock up to his knee and the other down to his ankle.

Erik sighs and looks away.

He places his suit jacket on a hanger and wedges it into Erik’s cupboard, fingering his other clothes and shirts lingeringly. He picks up a sleeve and brings it to his face, then inhales.

“I still have the shirt you gave me,” the boy mumbles, before pulling out a different shirt from the middle of his rack. “This… I think… is the shirt you wore when we went out that time you were punched in the nose. And you took off your coat and gave it to me…”

The boy goes still for a while.

Erik holds his breath unknowingly.

Then he regains his feet and walks on, shutting the doors of the cupboard as he passes. He stops at Erik’s dresser.

He studies Erik’s things—they’re just mundane, everyday items like cologne and pens and lotion—but they capture his rapt attention for a long while.  

As though he’s suddenly satisfied by a thought, the boy uprights himself and crosses the room, seating himself opposite Erik on the bed with his legs crossed.

“Earlier, when I was feeding you your breakfast… you looked at me with a smile. Just—a smile. And it completely warmed my heart—all the hurt of these past few days just _vanished_. God, Erik, do you realise how happy you looked?”

He scoots closer, near enough to press his forehead against Erik’s.

“You looked _so happy_ Erik.”

Small pale hands hold his face with crushing force. The boy’s nose brushes his – and his chest, as it heaves, fills with an expanse of breath as he murmurs, “I’ve never seen you that happy. Did I do that, Erik?”

His head rolls forward in a nod. Charles catches him and gently lifts him so their eyes meet.

The boy’s voice is frail, breaking, but depthless with certainty,

“Won’t you let me do that forever, Erik? Please?”

There’s a choked sob of tears, and Erik wouldn’t have doubted himself if not for the wetness streaming down his own cheeks, pressed close to Charles’s, and the sporadic shudder of his shoulders as he curls forward.

The boy shushes him, wipes him down with the fabric of his jumper, and patters him with kisses when he decidedly nods in reply.

\---

His head is pillowed on Erik’s lap, resting comfortably, and Erik wonders why he’d ever decided to go to work when he has this at home.

This, he thinks, is what can weave together the pieces of his heart.

This is his poetry, his words, his longing.

Charles looking up at him, wearing his clothes, laying across his lap on his bed—

When he can leave anytime he wants.

“Erik?”

“Hm?”

“You had an important meeting today.”

He shrugs. “It’s alright.”

“You could still make it. I doubt they’ll start without you.”

Smiling, and taking Charles in a smile with him, Erik leans down to kiss Charles’s cheek. “You’re right. They won’t. Even if I… took a week off?”

“Erik,” Charles gasps, eyes wide. “You can’t take a week’s leave just like that.”

“I would love it if you lived here with me,” he muses, catching Charles off guard. “Have you thought about it?”

At first Charles looks sad—Erik must sound desperate, after all—then he softens, raising his hand up to Erik’s hair.

“I’m starting to.”

Erik kisses his palm. “Thank you.”

Charles smiles. “I’d have to find a job nearby. Learn how to drive… And you’ll have to promise me you’ll stop—”

“I already quit,” he cuts in, failing at hiding a smirk.

“We both know it’s not that easy,” Charles says, pragmatic. “Here.” He presents his hand in front of Erik, wriggling his fingers, then resting a knuckle against the pad of Erik’s bottom lip.

He gives him a questioning look before taking the boy’s index finger into his mouth.

“There we go,” Charles grins up at him. “That works, doesn’t it?”

It does, in a way, _work_ ; he willingly ensconces his finger further, lips stretching. It’s enough to keep his mouth distracted, yes—but suckling on the boy, his flesh moistening, his taste thick—

Charles stirs in his lap.

“Someday,” he breathes, “you’re going to fuck me, right?”

Then his mouth goes dry, falling open.

The boy sits up and takes his finger out of Erik’s mouth with a pleased sound.

“Have you thought about it?” he echoes Erik’s question, sitting up on his knees.

Erik swallows.

“Don’t be shy,” he whispers, taking off Erik’s tie. “We have time. I have patience.”

And experience, which makes him that much more tempting, maddening.

Intimidating _._ God, the indecent brat is _intimidating_.

“I do think about it,” he rasps, flushing hotly when Charles stops and peers up at him. Slits of blue under dainty dark lashes.

“Will you tell me what you think about?” the boy inquires, removing his tie. “Like,” he tilts his head as he opens the first button of Erik’s shirt, “what position we’re in?”

The first image in his head is vivid, and causes a bolt of heat to course through him.

“On our sides,” he says lowly. He looks down as Charles continues to unbutton his shirt, the corner of his lips tugging up.

“I like that,” he purrs, nodding slowly.

He pulls back Erik’s shirt to reveal his chest, bare and flushed. Charles places his lips to Erik’s neck and slowly kisses downwards, then runs his hands over his skin.

“Would you fuck my mouth first?” Charles lets his fingertips graze Erik’s solar plexus.

“I… would like that,” Erik replies breathlessly.

“Bit forward, though,” Charles drawls, slumping down to place his head on Erik’s chest. “Don’t you think? We ought to wait.”

“If—um—okay. We should wait.”

So they wait.

Erik places his hands on Charles’s waist.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

He isn’t expecting that. It startles him into clutching Charles tight.

“Sometimes I just _needed_  you. And sometimes I simply needed to know _you_ were okay.”

Erik will never get used to the way Charles kisses.

He keeps his hands on the boy’s waist and lets him dominate, from the moment he springs up to find his lips and kiss them, to the moment they stickily pull apart and breathe.

They inch closer for another.

Erik’s phone rings.

“It’s probably someone from work,” he dismisses, taking his phone from the night stand and glancing at the caller ID.

But he’s wrong.

Charles lays his head on Erik’s shoulder.

“Please don’t,” he implores.

 _Dad_ calling, it says.

They silently listen to it sing its plea.

It’s his ninth call over the last twelve hours.

When it stops, Charles breathes out the sigh of relief that Erik wants to feel.

It rings again.

 _Emma_ calling, it says.

“Emma?” Charles frowns.

Calling directly after Jakob.

“Does Dad know you’re here?” Erik asks over the ringtone.

“No.” He places his hand on his forehead. “I just stormed out. I didn’t stop and inform him that I have nowhere to go so expect me to wind up at your son’s house.”

Erik groans.

“I have to take this,” he mutters, pressing the green button. “Hello?”

“Erik?” Emma sounds surprised. She can never sound worried, surely, so Erik interprets the high pitch of her voice to be alarm. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” he says. Anyone to call him now should think he’s at work, and considering he’s not—with nobody to attend his office phone—it may just be logical to be worried about his whereabouts. So Emma might just be _worried._ “What’s wrong?”

“You haven’t been picking up your cell or your office phone, that’s what. Neither has Charles. Jakob is really concerned.”

There’s a pause; a rustle as though the phone is being shifted.

“Do you know where Charles is?”

Erik looks at the boy sitting next to him, listening. He nods.

“Charles is here. With me.”

A sigh exits the speakers. Emma’s muffled voice retells, “Charles is with Erik.” Then there’s another inaudible pause.

“Emma,” he calls, “Is Dad with you?”

“Yeah, he’s here. He’s fine. Well, now he is.”

“Go to a different room,” he urges her. “Where Dad can’t hear you. Please.”

“… Okay, hold on.”

She sounds tired, but as the phone goes silent, Erik gets the impression she’s doing what she’s asked.

“Alright, I’m in the bedroom. Now listen to _me_ first. Jakob and Charles have split up—you know that, right?”

“Yes,” he replies carefully.

“Which means Charles is upset and alone, so it’s _important_ that you don’t overload him with your dramatic confessions of love. He needs you to be his friend right now, nothing more.”

Erik covers the phone with a hand and leans in towards Charles, whispering, “Should I tell her I sucked you off two minutes after you walked through the door?”

“Christ,” Charles huffs, a crimson blush blooming on his cheeks. Erik notes that even Charles’s thighs flushed with colour. He’s acres of discovery awaiting him.

What a pair they’re going to make.

“Hello? Erik, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“You need to promise me you won’t do anything foolish.”

Charles leans in close again, his head dropped on Erik’s shoulder as he listens to their conversation.

“I can’t,” he speaks into the phone. “I can’t promise you that.”

“ _Erik_ ,” she hisses. “Don’t tell me you’ve—”

“I did.”

“Did what.”

“I told him everything.”

“Are you insane?!”

“Yes,” he scoffs. “I’m absolutely fucking _mad_ about him and seeing him in the state he was in gave me no choice.”

“And what choice have you left Charles?”

“Let me,” Charles mumbles to him, taking his cell from his loose hold and placing it to his ear. Erik isn’t even given a second to reel it back before the boy is saying, “Hello, Emma. It’s Charles here.”

Then he bites his lip and shuffles off the bed and onto his feet, his free hand tugging his sleeve in all directions.

Erik looks on apprehensively.

“I understand—” the boy gets in, before Emma jabbers on, and Charles quietly sticks to chewing his bottom lip. When the speaker goes silent, Charles takes a deep breath and determinedly gets a few words in. “It’s nothing like that. I assure you Emma, it’s nothing like that… No, I don’t want to go to _Westchester,_ I want to be here with Erik and nowhere else.”

The words are baffling, easily dragging the air out of his lungs. It’s a shame Emma is the direct recipient of the confession, but Erik isn’t in a place to complain. He manoeuvres himself onto his feet and walks over to where the boy is pacing the length of his bedroom.

“I don’t want _space_.” He sighs. “I just want Erik. I’m happy with him here—very happy.” Charles turns to acknowledge Erik’s approaching figure. His round blue eyes scan his face closely. “And he’s very happy too. I promise.”

Erik plasters himself against the boy’s back, nose in his hair.

Charles is silently listening to what he’s being told. He slowly turns around to face Erik instead, and reaches out to place his small pale hand on Erik’s cheek. Down on his jaw, where a faded scar traces memories of heartache.

“I know he does, Emma.” Charles is rubbing his thumb over Erik’s eyebrow. “I believe you.”

Erik melts against the boy’s touch.

Charles hums at something Emma says, then steps closer to him. Erik moves in for a fleeting kiss against the corner of the boy’s mouth.

“I need him,” Charles murmurs, his lips ghosting over Erik’s. The words are whispered into his mouth. “I really really need him.”

Emma goes quiet in thought.

Erik takes his cell back and ends the call.

Charles doesn’t utter a word about how rude it is.

It’s not possible with Erik’s mouth clamped over his, lips pressing gently in a long, but chaste kiss.

Erik drops his cell on the bed before wrapping his arms around Charles’s waist. In that moment, he simply tries to remember the grief of being without the boy, the overbearing depth of suppressed emotions,  resorting to show his anger when all he’s ever wanted to express is love, and he sighs.

He thinks about now. The body in his arms. The head on his shoulder. The lips against his neck.

The surge of gratitude calms his pacing heart. The memories of a year’s anguish now surpassed by the joy of this day’s arrival.

His indecent brat wants to stay.

“Erik… why are you crying?”

He shakes his head, burying his face into Charles’s hair.

“Tell me.” The boy’s voice wobbles.

Erik slowly goes down on his knees, hands dragging down Charles’s body until he’s clutching his hips. He weeps with relief, but Charles still worries. He descends next to him, holding Erik’s face and stroking his hair back, like he’s delicate.

When Charles kisses his tears away Erik leans his weight against him and lets himself be rubbed on the back, soothed by the boy.

“I’ll be good to you,” he tells Erik, wrapping around him with arms and legs. “I know I’m a stupid boy. But I’ll be so good to you.”

They make love on the carpet.

Erik is spread out on his back, watching as Charles slips off the blue jumper and slowly steps out of his underwear. He sits back down on his knees and touches himself, thighs spread. He keeps his eyes on Erik and Erik looks back as the boy wrings his cock with one hand and rubs his nipple with the other, skittering nails over sensitive flesh.

A compliment, a comment on Charles’s beauty and grace would come off as a thoughtless understatement. In that moment he is a stanza unwritten; too much to ponder over, too little put down into words. Erik still hasn’t worked out how to reassure himself, that this is real.

This is Charles, moaning through his nose, lip caught between teeth, as he gropes for his flesh and puts an arch in his back. Erik pulls his hand forward and positions him until Charles is kneeling over his chest, facing away from him. The boy covers Erik’s groin with his hand but doesn’t move any further when Erik leans up on an elbow and presses a wet, open-mouthed kiss to Charles’s round arse. He sits up to press his thumbs to the dimples that indent him just above and runs his hands down until he’s opening Charles up and kissing him again. The boy falls forward on his hands and knees and spreads himself more, gasping. His legs shift to part, his cock thick between them. Erik cups his balls with his palm as he flicks his tongue up and down the skin of Charles’s arse cheeks, lapping them from the inside until he’s moist. The taste is non-existent; but he continues to lick at him with quick dashes of his tongue, gathering sweat and dampness. Charles is red in the face and supporting himself on quivering thighs. Every sound is as though it’s being forced out of him, from the back of his long throat, with a curl of his fingers.

Erik smooths the pad of his thumb over Charles’s perineum, blinking at his small hole. He’s only managed to fit his middle finger halfway inside before Charles yells and bucks away from him. Erik withdraws and placates him with kisses and stroking, gentle hands.

Charles is working on his belt, fixing it open and taking it out before unzipping Erik’s slacks and pulling his boxers down. Erik works his clothes off the rest of the way and helps Charles turn around, his cock sliding against the boy’s and the boy’s legs either side of Erik’s as they face each other again.

When Charles places his mouth on him, Erik bites his soft lips and cups his head, gripping wavy hair. Charles grinds down on him, breathless and flushed in the position that only allows his hips to move. Erik impales himself upwards, thrusting against Charles’s belly. His leverage is limited to the hold he has on the boy’s upper body and he makes the most of it with biting kisses and tightly clutching hands.

Charles says Erik’s name with unflinching eye contact, rolling his hips. Every move of his is indecent, every move meant for him.

His cockhead rubs against Charles’s hip, marking a trail of pre-ejaculate. Charles, in turn, dips his fingers through it.

Tastes it.

Erik’s head falls back; he’s normally relatively silent in bed, but he feels ready to scream.

Instead he flips them over, clutching Charles’s leg from the junction at his hip and thrusting relentlessly, nipping over Charles’s bare skin. The boy cries out and curls forward, then turns his head to the side, whimper and moan pouring out of his lips. One small pale hand reaches down and squeezes his cock; then he raises his leg further, Erik supporting him, and inserts a finger inside his hole. Erik bucks harder, muscles strained. He keeps his hand on the boy’s neck and bites his lip, hard, as his body convulses.

Now Charles is sobbing openly—his toes curl as he plunges his finger deeper inside himself, knowing his own limit and yet, going past it.

He’s given no orders to go faster, or harder, but he does so regardless, digging his nails into Charles’s skin. He’s rubbing himself along the length of Charles’s shaft and watching between urges to squeeze his eyes shut, as Charles’s finger digs into his hole and twists.

Erik skims his hands up and down the boy’s body, feeling the shape of him.

With a frazzled edge to his voice, Charles murmurs, “Come in my mouth.”

As though he likes the way Erik tastes and—

“Want to taste you again…”

Erik groans, biting Charles’s shoulder. He slowly drops Charles’s leg. The boy keeps his finger inside himself. Erik works his way up to straddle his face and holds his cock from the base, adjusting himself to keep his swollen glans placed over Charles’s lips. He can tell Charles is impatient, tongue flitting out to roll over Erik’s slit, and so he bucks his hips a few more times and comes—all over Charles’s lips. He aims for his tongue, but thick white droplets course down his chin and stripe his cheek, glossing his lips.

Charles pants, quirking a small smile.

Erik rubs his tip over Charles’s smiling lips, dripping with remains.

Charles licks his lips with an obscenely stretched out tongue.

Erik kisses his neck as he swallows and shuffles downwards, lips travelling along the boy’s body. His fingers feels for his ribs, which they find too easily. Chest, sternum, navel, everything shapes itself smoothly under Erik’s hands. Skin he’s wanted to touch and taste and smell and bite, stretching out underneath him for exploration.

“Let go, come on, let go.”

Charles thumbs his foreskin restlessly, his breath short and loud.

Erik lifts his leg and kisses up his delicate inner thigh. He takes out Charles’s finger from where it’s lodged inside himself and licks it into his mouth, sucking. “Fuck,” the boy rasps.

Charles raises his hips as he comes, and lazily fists himself through it, hand coating with jets of his seed. Erik obligingly wipes him clean of it with his tongue, trying to get used to the tang of the boy’s taste.

“That was nice.” Charles bites his lip, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “That was really nice.”

Erik makes a noise of agreement as he licks over Charles’s balls. The boy clamps his thighs together with a hitched breath. Erik noses him open again and resumes his meticulous cleaning job, this time holding the boy’s legs apart.

“You love doing that,” Charles breathes, half-questioning.

“Love you,” he slurs. “Love it when you make those noises. Love tasting you.”

“Mmm…” Charles is still red-faced when he glances down at Erik’s head between his legs. Or tongue, rather.

He shivers when Erik’s hair tickles his thighs. “Too much,” he whispers, absently scratching Erik’s scalp, but not pushing him away. The most he does is press the inside of his thighs either side of Erik’s head and squeeze, his cheeks flanked by boy’s tender skin—meaning to crush Erik’s face without even coming close.

It’s difficult to pull his weight up onto his legs and find a means for washing each other up, but with Herculean effort, he manages it. His phone rings and rings with calls from work, and he ignores each without a flinch; instead he tosses his phone under the bed, once it’s silenced, in favour of dragging a wet cloth over every part of Charles’s body that isn’t flailed at him in a fit of hysterics.

Erik sits back on his knees and gazes at the boy, as he pants through laughter.

“This is going to take a while, isn’t it?”

His reply is a hand flapped through the air.

“I’m going to go to the kitchen and make you something. You haven’t eaten anything all day.” He purses his lips. “Coming with me?”

Charles wipes a tear and makes a gesture at his foot.

“My foot’s asleep,” he says eventually, chest rapidly moving up and down.

“Wait here then.” But Charles whines and pouts his lips, and Erik suddenly remembers that this boy may be perfect for him and incredibly fucking gorgeous, but he’s also a handful, and that he wants to deal with this handful for the rest of his life. “Piggyback?”

That option wins.

Charles climbs onto his back, arms around his neck, and together they trek to the kitchen. Erik prepares him a shamefully bland late breakfast using reheated leftovers from the meal Charles had made him earlier.

What a pair they’re going to make.

Charles gives him a sloppy kiss when Erik places the plate in front of him.

“Feed me,” Charles joyfully insists, hands buried in his lap.

Erik should’ve expected it.

He should also expect Charles to moan throatily and lick his lips copious times and hollow his cheeks around the fork and keep his widened blue eyes trained on Erik’s as he opens his mouth and then chew on small bites so he can prod at the inside of his cheek with his tongue—

It still comes as a surprise.

On the last mouthful, Charles throws his head back and touches his neck.

Indecent brat fails to cover it.

Erik pins him down to the kitchen island and kisses him ruthlessly, tangling their tongues, pressing hard on his lips.

When he pulls away and moves off, Charles catches his hand.

They stay like that for a while, catching their breath. The boy’s expression changes into something serious, playfulness dissipating.

“I meant what I said.”

Erik immediately thinks of it.

_I’ll be so good to you._

He turns to look at the boy, who slowly sits up.

“I don’t doubt you, if that’s what you think,” he replies, but it comes off as weak. Charles is second-guessing himself, doubting his love, because Jakob has hurt him that badly. Words can’t reassure him.

But it was the circumstances.

He wants to remind Charles of that.

No sane human would let go of Charles willingly. Not unless it’s costing them every single other thing in their life.

Charles needs to understand that, but better yet, _Erik_ needs to make it clear to him.

If only it didn’t pain him to mention his father.

At the end of the day, the man thinks he’s going to be better off without his angel.

Erik lived every moment in agony without his indecent brat.

“You’ve left me…”

He snaps out of his thoughts. At the realisation of Charles’s words, he shakes his head rigorously with a worried frown.

“No.” He reaches out to hold Charles’s face in his hands. “No, I’ll _never_ leave you, do you understand me? Never, I promise—”

Charles’s small pale hands land on his arms. “Erik.” He smiles coyly. “You were lost in thought, that’s all. It’s alright.” He kisses both of Erik’s hands. “I know you won’t leave me.” He kisses both hands again. “I know you won’t.”

“Never,” he confirms.

Every moment—every single one: _agony._ Muted agony.

Charles hops off the island and wraps his arms around Erik’s waist. He settles in against him, radiating warmth.

They really are this good together.

\---

The rest of the sunlit day is spent with his head pillowed on Charles’s lap.

Erik reaches up to hold Charles’s cheek, a thumb tracing his lip.

“If I ever said or did something that upset you,” Erik lowers his voice, “I’m sorry.”

Charles had looked calm and sated before, revelling at Erik’s touch. Now his brows steeple, lips downturned. He fumbles with the quilt he’s swaddled in.

“Erik… I might have taken it personally then, but… now it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I slammed the door on your hand,” he says frankly, cringing. He grabs hold of Charles’s hand where it threads through his hair and determinedly kisses it again and again.

“It was this one.” Charles shows him his right hand. He beams when Erik wordlessly takes it to his lips, placing kiss after kiss, turning it over to get every part of his small pale hand. “I know you didn’t do it intentionally.”

“No,” he mumbles, lips parted over a knuckle. “But I deliberately said terrible things to you.”

“And you’re forgiven.” Charles—for all the offence he’d undoubtedly taken at being called a _slutty parasite_ and a _bitch_ , being ignored and condescended in a regular, unchanging cycle of tears and arguments—bends forward to kiss him on the forehead, compassionate. He doesn’t move his face away immediately. He hovers over him, smiling to himself. “You never meant to upset me. You just loved to see me cry.”

At first, he pretends he doesn’t hear it.

Then an uncontrollable smile breaks across his face, which he guiltily hides against Charles’s stomach.

“I _knew_ it. I bloody knew it.” Charles playfully pushes him away, grinning madly. He mocks Erik’s voice: “ _Ugly crying face_. Fuck you. Do you know how fucking paranoid you made me?” He shoves him again, but Erik quickly catches him and interlocks their fingers, raising their joined hands up between their faces. He moves to sit up on his knees, looming over Charles.

“Say that again.” He bumps their foreheads.

“Say what…” Charles licks his lips and looks down at Erik’s.

“I love it when you curse.” He squeezes the boy’s fingers between his own.

“Really?” Charles narrows his eyes. He rakes his teeth over his lip, then shapes the word, “Fucking.”

“Mm.” Erik’s tongue flicks out to lick Charles’s bitten bottom lip. “Say it once more.”

Charles smirks. He pronounces it emphatically. “Fuck you.”

“I like ‘fucking’.”

“I _love_ fucking.”

Erik shakes his head in disbelief.

Charles wets his lips.

How is he going to deal with this handful?

Easily, it seems—so long as it involves closing the distance between his mouth and Charles’s, and fervent, messy kissing that would end up in them tipping over sideways and staying like that; horizontal and intertwined.

Then, hours can pass. Hours spent gazing, brushing away hair, lazily locking lips, and the resting against the presence of another until Charles shakes him awake to tell him he’s starving.

He places a hand on his stomach and pouts.

The boy climbs over him, quilt still wrapped around his body, and pads over to the kitchen. Erik quickly moves to catch the end of the quilt and pulls. Charles stops short and sighs as the coverlet drops onto the ground and pools at his feet.

He shrugs once when Erik does and says nothing, then continues on towards the kitchen, completely nude and half-hard. He orders take-out with his accent more clipped than usual.

It’s only when the doorbell rings that Erik jumps onto his feet and throws the quilt over the boy, whose laughter comes out muffled and manic from underneath the protective layer that shields him from the eyes of the delivery man.

\---

Erik’s phone remains under the bed, disregarded.

“You really ought to go to work tomorrow,” Charles mumbles during dinner, but Erik shakes his head dismissively.

He doesn’t even go to check it when they return to his bedroom at night, but then again, Charles doesn’t check his phone either.

He bends down to collect his clothes, which he’d been neglecting for most of the day, and places them on the hooks behind the door. Erik takes off his shirt and smiles when Charles turns to look at him, skin gleaming from the moonlight’s lustrous gaze. Erik feels disinclined to draw the drapes closed. From where the boy stands baring the profile of his entire body—one hand reaching up and the other down by his side, weight on one foot while the other curls onto tiptoes, heel in the air—Erik can’t help but gaze appreciatively. His front is shaded by darkness, but from the behind, he is glowing from the milk-white light he catches; and it illuminates him from the bones of his shoulders and the dip in his back, down to the curve of his arse that leads to form the silhouette of strong, long legs.

Erik can only think of one word: _angel._

“Come here,” Erik beckons, opening his arms for Charles who walks into them with a sigh. Before Erik can, the boy speaks.

“Today was perfect, Erik.” He nuzzles Erik throat, his nose slightly cold against his skin.

“It was.” He holds Charles’s face up and kisses him on the nose. “Because you were in it.”

Charles shuts his eyes, then smiles, and goes back to stuffing his face against Erik’s neck. He swings his arm up to place his fingers on Erik’s shoulder, and so he takes the boy by his delicate wrist and peppers kisses down his arm—following a trail of dispersed freckles.

He’s closely acquainting himself with the slope of the boy’s clavicle, the skin there sensitive to even a scratch, when his shoulders begin to shake with silent laughter.

“What?” Erik asks, leisurely fingering through the strands of Charles’s hair.

He presses a kiss to Erik’s chin and smiles through his reply, “I don’t have to ask you for a hug anymore.”

Erik doesn’t imagine the way Charles’s arms suddenly grip him tighter.

The boy’s chest becomes his pillow for the night, the arms around him pillars of comfort, and the occasional kisses pressed against his head serve as constant reminders that Charles is awake and equally as restless.

\---

Erik wakes up hoping that today will be just as peaceful as the day before. And for the most part, it is.

Somehow, Charles has ended up on _his_ chest, neither of them on a pillow, and the boy’s socked feet are sticking out from under the bottom of the covers. Charles is even drooling a little bit. Erik tips his chin up and wipes him with his thumb, chuckling. He doesn’t mention it when the boy rouses.

Morning kisses have always disconcerted him. Luckily, the few bed partners he’s had have always awoken with the good sense to up and leave, rather than linger and move in for a kiss.

So of course, Charles is unlike that.

He scoots up the bed, ruffled hair falling over his sleepy eyes as he places an elbow either side of Erik’s head and looks down with a smile.

“Morning.”

His head falls forward to press his nose against Erik’s. Slowly, dreamy blue eyes fall closed again. His lips stick out in a pout before they drop onto Erik’s in a quick, sweet peck.

Then he hums and lays his head down on Erik’s chest. His hand moves to settle near Erik’s neck as he happily murmurs, “I don’t want to get up. Can’t we stay here all day, like this?”

And so, with the sweet morning kiss that had made his heart flutter away into Charles’s palm, Erik decides that they’re going to prolong the lazy, drugged feeling of waking up in a lover’s embrace, and stay in bed for as long as their bodies can manage. Charles goes back to sleep almost immediately.

It’s their second day together.

 _Only_ their second day together.

Every door is open for Charles to leave whenever he wants.

He doesn’t.

He curls up against Erik and sighs, then reaches for Erik’s arm and winds it around his waist.

“Is this what you really want?” Erik asks the air, once he’s convinced that Charles’s small breaths are an indication of him asleep. “Nobody’s ever wanted this, Charles.”

Nobody’s ever wanted to lay in his arms, kiss him early in the morning, choose to stay for a while. Charles is the first.

And hence, he’s crazy; and that’s why they’re a perfect pair.

Stupid, stupid boy.

Eventually, it’s no surprise that the boy’s stomach gives out a growl of hunger. Erik’s appetite is non-existent at best, but Charles is infamous for his intake.

Fighting a yawn, he says, “I’m hungry,” after which he makes no move to get up, so Erik takes the hint.

“Breakfast in bed?”

“I’ll go as far as the bathroom to wash and brush.” He tugs the covers up to his ears. “Then I’m jumping back in.”

Erik feels like he can write a million pages about him, just in this moment: huddled comfortably in his bed.

He makes an effort in the kitchen for once, gathering the sparse edible items filling the pantry and assembling something Charles would be impressed by.

A part of him knows that the boy would beam and take whatever Erik presents to him on the tray, even if it is French toast and a large mug of frothy coffee.

Erik pretends to be reading the newspaper for all of thirty seconds before he’s putting it away and shuffling forward to share sips of coffee and kiss up the boy’s jaw.

“Thank you Erik,” he breathes, hands clutching his mug tighter when Erik finds his lips pressing over the boy’s ear. He can’t help but lick, note that Charles likes it, then lick again, memorising the hitch in his breath.

“For what?”

Unsurprisingly, he sounds like he’s completely drunk. His throat sounds like it’s been roughened by the spill of alcohol. Charles glances at him with a smile that turns impish when Erik takes the coffee mug from him and places it on the side table.

“This.” Blue eyes rove up to the ceiling, lashes framing them. “Everything between us. It’s lovely.” He drops his chin to look at Erik. “You’re lovely to me.”

He pauses for an instant, then fishes for Charles’s hands from under the covers; he holds them both in his palms before ducking his head to kiss them. Charles tilts his head to the side.

“Erik… you make me feel like I’m made of gold.”

“Good,” he murmurs. After a beat, poised over his hands, he adds, “You were made for _me_.”

When he looks up, Charles is blushing. A few more ardent kisses to his hands and arms later, the boy lets his head hit the pillow as he slides down to lay on his back. Erik joins him on his side, coloured surprised when Charles hooks his leg around his hip and rolls on top of him.

He throws the covers off Erik’s legs and begins crawling backwards on his hands and knees.

“Oh _fuck_ —are you going to—”

He’s not ready for this to happen. Sure enough, he’s done it to Charles and has had it done to him before, but on this occasion, with this boy—

“I won’t last long,” he says in advance, just to forewarn.

Charles raises a brow.

It’s already building up inside him, anticipation the catalyst. Charles is beautiful and naked, not a thread of clothing on an inch of skin. He reaches his position over Erik’s hips and slowly pulls down his boxers.

And in a way that will never not be flattering, Charles’s eyes widen.

The cold air hitting him, followed by the boy’s hot breath fanning him—he swallows and concentrates on the darkness behind his eyelids.

“Won’t look?”

The boy sounds almost smug as he unravels his wet tongue over the hardening flesh of his head, fingers passing down his navel indulgently.

Erik places his arm over his eyes as his abs quiver.

“Fine.” A small pale hand wraps tightly around his cock. “Don’t watch.”

Erik lets out a low growl. “I can’t… you’re—”

Everything he’s ever dreamed of, sucking on his cock.

Charles hums in understanding.

Erik feels soft, moist lips close around his tip, press down and twist, the inside of a throat fluttering against his head as he’s taken in further and licked.

Placing both hands on the bed spread, he clutches the sheets and swallows, mind blank with pleasure.

Charles comes off him noisily and leisurely jerks him off with one hand. The other is now on Erik’s, easing his clenched fingers out so their hands can interlock.

He opens his eyes and glances down.

Charles smiles up at him, then with their eyes locked, brings his tongue out and slides it down Erik’s shaft, ever so graceful in his indecency. Like an elegant cat licking its paws clean, he flits his tongue across the length of Erik’s cock, giving particular care to wiry veins and his sensitive underside. Erik makes a fist of their joined hands, and cries out a strained, throaty rendition of Charles’s name that makes the boy lick in quicker strokes. No scraping teeth, no gargled noises and choked coughs—Charles takes him in to the brim with calm breaths through his nose, and begins to seamlessly move up and down the extent of his lengthy hardness.

He doesn’t flinch when Erik thrusts.

He slowly rakes his eyes up to find Erik’s, the contact holding, shimmering, and it’s quite a feat that Charles—mouth fully occupied—doesn’t look away first. Erik’s ears redden as he tightens his jaw and writhes on his sweaty back, hoping his warning is comprehensible to Charles.

“Close,” sounds more like a strangled plea rather than a signal for his imminent orgasm, but Charles seems to read him well enough. He angles his throat without removing his mouth, where he’s taking him deep, and holds Erik by the base. The glint in the boy’s eyes tells him he loves this part; filling his used throat, drinking his hard work. Unless Charles plans to surprise him by spitting it all out, which, considering how willingly he has swallowed Erik’s semen before, seems unlikely.

Entirely. Erik comes liberally into his hot mouth, and each stream is taken in with enthusiastic gulps and licks, including the excess that escapes his lips. He drags his lips off Erik’s cock and cleans himself of the droplets around his mouth and chin.

He wears the title proudly. Indecent brat, sucking Erik off in the morning with a smile and making him come too soon.

His ears are still burning red when Charles crawls up to lay on top of him and reaches his hands out to hold them.

Erik clears his throat. “I can… I can do better than that.”

Charles frowns, looking slightly affronted. “What?”

“I mean.” Erik purses his lips. “I mean I’m not that… I came very quickly. I’m sorry. I’m embarrassed.”

Charles relaxes into a chuckle, wet red lips stretching prettily.

“Don’t be embarrassed.” He shakes his head, then rests his chin on Erik’s chest. He watches Erik react to his words, then drops his head to press his cheek over his skin. Quietly, he says, “I’m falling in love with you.”

Erik sits still, then abruptly tries to sit up, and in doing so manages to hit his head back against the headboard.

“That’s… _ow._ ” He winces aloud, sharp pain momentarily numbing his joy.

Charles bolts upright and pulls his face to his chest, a hand rubbing over the back of his skull. “It’s alright, you’re alright,” he soothes, moving in to place a kiss on the small bump beneath his hair.

“Hm.” He wraps his arms around Charles’s waist. “I may have forgotten the last ten seconds of my life. Could you repeat what you’d said last?”

Charles breaks out in soft, warm laughter. He kisses Erik’s head again.

“I said, I’m falling in love with you.”

Erik swallows and closes his eyes. His arms tighten, but Charles doesn’t complain.

“So you mean to tell me that I’m the luckiest man on Earth?”

Charles goes completely silent while his heart beats loudly against Erik’s ear. He kisses him again, at the very same moment Erik moves to kiss him over his chest.

He jests, “ _I’m_ the one who got breakfast in bed.”

But that just confirms it even more.

“I really am.”

He kisses a line across Charles’s waist.

And then he’s tugged down onto the bed again, this time with Charles back on top of him, treating him to kisses as he pulls the covers over them. Erik is too awake to sleep, but Charles, as he’s learning, is prepared to doze off at the drop of a hat.

“There are three things I am always ready for, Erik.” He has his eyes shut as he talks. “Sleeping, eating, and having sex.”

Which is basically all Charles has done today, so Erik decides that perhaps, he’s doing something right.

\---

They rouse late in the day, Charles’s chin fairly clean of drool and Erik’s headache absent. It takes effort to get the boy on his feet—both physically, and also because the sight of him sleeping is too dear for Erik to disturb—and they fail to reach a compromise before Erik is scooping him up into his arms, bridal-fashion, and taking him to the restroom. They waste too much time simply standing under the drizzle of water, Charles’s back to Erik’s chest, warmth transferring between their linked bodies.

Their entire routine is jumbled and out of place, but Erik finally feels like the biggest part of his life is falling into place.

This time round, when the doorbell rings for dinner delivery, Charles is dressed in Erik’s t-shirt and a pair of his boxers.

“I’ll get it,” he hoots, a very discernible bounce in his step as he goes to open the door. Lost in an overwhelming surge of love, Erik smiles and heads for the kitchen to get the plates. When he turns around, Charles is still holding the door open. His shoulders are stiff, tensed.

Erik steps closer, and finds the delivery man isn’t there.

Jakob is.

Anger, sadness, guilt—it all floods him. Protectiveness, for he wants to bundle Charles in his arms until he softens again.

The boy shakily drops his hand from the handle.

At the very least, they can expect Jakob to show some composure, who finally takes his eyes away from Charles’s face and glances behind him at Erik.

“Hello,” he says quietly, raising a hand to take off his black fedora. That ancient thing his father has owned ever since he can remember, the one that Erik would steal to wear so he could be like his father—his only role model, his only family, his everything.

And sons had the tendency to do that, didn’t they? Want what their fathers have.

Erik clears his throat. “Hi Dad,” he says carefully, though he’s dropped his gaze so he doesn’t have to meet his eye.

His voice seems to startle Charles, who slowly takes a step back towards Erik. The boy’s eyes land in the direction of the fedora held between Jakob’s hands, and that sight seems to _evoke_ something in him—he backs away further until he’s right in front of Erik, trembling, his eyes clenched shut and his hands balled into fists.

“Hello, Erik… Charles.”

Erik nods, his gaze darting from his father to the boy, both of them looking equally terrified. To his relief, before he feels compelled to _yell_ at the top of his voice to dispel the tension permeating the air, Jakob continues.

“You’re both probably wondering why I came here.” He clears his throat, fidgeting with the rim of his hat. “Firstly, most importantly, I’ve come to apologise.”

He takes a step closer, tentative. “And secondly, I’ve… come to…”

He pauses again, and that’s when Charles closes the distance between them and throws his arms around Erik’s neck, face buried away, his back to Jakob. Wet lashes brush against Erik’s skin. His hand goes up instinctively to rub the boy’s back. Long soothing circles.

Jakob looks away.

“I’ve come to give you—give you all of,” he swallows and clenches his hat, moving to the side. Behind him are two suitcases, one large and one small. “All of Charles’s things.”

The boy relaxes just a little. Erik gives a small nod, restricted by Charles’s enclosing arms.

“Thank you,” Erik mutters.

His father brings the fedora up to his chest and studies the tiled ground, his eyes looking like they’ve been robbed of rest. It makes Erik want to pull the man to his chest too.

Charles turns to rest his cheek on Erik’s shoulder.

“Emma told me,” Jakob utters with a stoic nod, still glancing downwards. “She told me.”

“Dad.” Erik grits his teeth. “You don’t have to.”

“No, I do.” He takes a step forward. “I’m _happy_ for you both. I have to do this, I have to tell you that I’m—”

“Dad…”

“Erik I’m _happy_ for you.” His smile is wide, but tearful. “Truly. Your happiness is my happiness. And look at you, you’re… you’re happy, aren’t you?”

Charles’s chest stops rising and falling, like he’s holding his breath.

“Very happy,” Erik whispers. Louder, he repeats, “I’m very happy.”

“Then so am I,” Jakob practically exclaims, arms spread. “What would make me happier?” He weakly gestures towards Charles, eyes flickering. “He cares about you so much. I know how much he’ll…”

Jakob turns around. Erik can’t tell if he should feel angry for feeling pain, or the other way round. Charles fists his hand in Erik’s shirt. He manages to kiss the boy soundly on the cheek before his father turns back around, expression managed and eyes wiped.

But the way Jakob looks at them, grieved and yet inclined to pull his lips in a smile—it doesn’t hold its charm, it makes his eyes look more tired than they are, with the effort.

Every time Jakob’s eyes fall on Charles, Erik’s heart stutters.

“My angel in good hands, looking after my dear son…”

Erik shuts his eyes and lets Charles’s warm tears wet a patch on his shirt. “I once told you, Erik—” He opens his eyes and slowly meets his father’s gaze. “I once told you that nothing will keep me happier than knowing that my two boys can get along. Didn’t I?”

Exactly those words. Erik nods, patting Charles’s arm—but the boy remains put. Jakob sighs.

“Forgive me.” His father takes a step closer. Charles grips Erik’s hair from the nape. “Forgive me, Charles.”

But the conversation remains one-sided. The boy acknowledges him with tears. Jakob turns to his son.

“Promise me you’ll look after him. Promise me, Erik.” He drops tearful eyes and gives his fedora a fond look, brushing away flecks of dirt. “Keep him happy… please. I could never, but…”

“I will.”

His voice sounds surprisingly even, like integrity alone is keeping it from going frail.

The boy sniffles and turns his face towards Erik.

“I know you will.” Jakob breathes in through his nose, hands behind his back. He looks collected all of a sudden—the hunch in his back gone, the tremble of his fingers hidden behind his coat. “You’ll give him nothing to complain about, I know you will. You’re both young… nothing to—nothing to be ashamed of.”

The word make him stiffen with shock.

_Ashamed._

His father was _ashamed_ of Charles. Ashamed of their gaping age difference, ashamed of being seen him with him in public, ashamed of how he couldn’t give the boy what he wanted in return.

Inside, Charles must be _devastated_.

And here Erik is, afraid to come off as too desperately in love with this boy—this insatiable handful, who Erik would do anything for and more.

He turns his head a careful fraction. Charles still has his cheek resting against Erik’s shoulder. He somehow looks like a calmed child whose tears are slowly drying, his eyes blankly staring at nothing specific. Erik’s t-shirt hangs over his frame unfittingly, loose over his shoulders and arms. All the love Charles feels for him—how can it compare to the sadness he feels around Jakob?

A year is a long time, Erik knows well enough.

And he also knows that all they’ve been doing is argue, and that Jakob should have something to say to Charles.

“Dad.” Erik gives him a pointed look in Charles’s direction. “Talk to him.”

Jakob nods and hesitantly steps closer, watching them, and oddly, looking pleased by the sight. He doesn’t look at Erik the way Erik would look at him, when Charles sought out his arms. He looks like he’s at peace with what’s in front of him.

“I’ll let you two be alone.”

He carefully and reluctantly dislodges Charles from around him. The boy clings and burrows further into Erik’s neck, but after a gentle kiss on his temple, he relents to stand on his own while Erik goes to exit the front room. He gives him a look over his shoulder at the doorway of his bedroom, certain that Charles would benefit from a moment alone and maybe, get some closure.

He shuts the door and paces around his room.

He’s _nervous._ Nervous about them arguing again, Jakob leaving in rage and Charles back to the way he was two nights ago, shattered and completely down on himself. Nervous about what that could mean for his relationship with his father, which he wants to see mended.

But their voices are calm.

Erik is desperate to put his ear against the door.

All he can hear is _forgive me_ and _Erik_ and _love_.

He takes it Emma has done a good job convincing Jakob of that. For Charles, from now on, _Erik_ and _love_ should always be in the same sentence.

The door is knocked, followed by a call of his name.

Erik opens the door, and the very same moment, his father wraps him in a hug. Erik glances at Charles over his shoulder, who finally looks mollified as he tucks his hair behind his ear and smiles at him. Then Erik relaxes into his father’s embrace, and complacently hugs him back.

“I’ve missed you. I’ve missed having you around, son.” Jakob gives his shoulder a squeeze before withdrawing to look at him. “You were _worrying_ me at first, and now that I know why I had half of you and half of your vehement misery, following you like a grey cloud, every time you were with me— _God_ , Erik, I’m terribly sorry. I never knew.”

He shakes his head, even as his father comes forward to cup his face and peck his forehead.

“I’m sorry for the way I acted,” he rasps, but Jakob frowns at him the way he would when Erik says something ridiculous, and he suddenly, fiercely, misses his father with an ache.

“No need to be. Just spend some time with your old man. Visit me often. Tell me whatever I can do for you. Don’t forget me. Please.”

The ache rises in his chest further, like a set of weights dropped over him—and yet this moment of forgiveness and reaping promises is an enormous relief, his father’s hand is warm when he holds it, and the silence between them feels pleasant.

Until Jakob tells him he has to leave, and takes his fedora off his head to place it on Erik’s.

Immediately, he knows he should reject being handed something so profound, but his father insists, “Yours, now,” and Erik is shocked to realise how much more persuasion he doesn’t need.

When Jakob walks past Charles to get to the front door, they share a long look, completely silent. To Erik, it’s a blank stare, but the downward turn to his father’s lips speaks of something else entirely. The boy looks away first.

“Goodbye,” Jakob says, and Charles nods at the ground.

“Goodbye, Jakob.”

“Goodbye, son.”

Erik steps closer to meet him at the door. “Take care,” he murmurs, placing his hand on his father’s back.

The delivery man comes marching in just as Jakob exits, his hands tucked into his coat pockets as he nods a greeting to the man entering with the bag over his shoulder. Erik pays him absently, then hauls the two suitcases inside from out in the hallway. He shuts the door and sighs.

Charles steps up behind him, too quietly for him to have noticed, and takes the bag of food to place it on the kitchen island. When Erik’s hands are free, the boy plasters himself to his back and kisses his shoulder.

Turning around to face him, he’s pounced on with a sudden, eager kiss on the mouth. Erik can’t hold him back for even a moment before the boy’s lips are all over his face, spoiling him with numerous kisses.

Charles should be asking for space, a moment alone with his thoughts, a while for himself.

Instead, he strokes Erik’s hair back and says,

“Shall we start unpacking? Or eat first? I can’t decide.”

And Erik thinks,

_Oh._

He really is mine, now.

\---

On their sides, Erik grips Charles’s hip and kneads his hand into the soft flesh.

Charles pushes back against him, his arm overlapping Erik’s.

The boy lets out a pained moan, frustrated, and fisting his own hair.

“More,” he begs. “Harder, faster, _more,_ christ’s sake.”

Weaving their legs together, Erik shoves his hips forward, reaching down for Charles’s cock. This time, he doesn’t get batted away, so he takes the hint that the boy is close.

Eventually, Charles ends up on his stomach, arse raised, his knees bracketed by Erik’s, as they sweat and moan their way into another round and another explosive orgasm that dirties their already soiled sheets.

Erik pounds into him, his hand covering the front of Charles’s throat and his teeth in the boy’s shoulder.

Every touch is a caress, every brush of their lips is a kiss, and every time their bodies meet is bliss.

Charles manages to find the pieces of his heart and weeps.

Erik watches every tear as it rolls.

“That bad?” He folds his arms. “Here I thought I could become a writer.”

Charles asks for custody of every single page and paper. He keeps them on his desk.

“Now you have all the pieces of my heart,” Erik says.

After they’ve fucked for three hours straight, Charles flips onto his back and fixes his glazed eyes on the ceiling as he places one hand behind his head, the other roaming up and down his abdomen.  

He blinks and says,

“Do you ever feel angry at me?… I must’ve hurt you a lot. You suffered a lot because of me.”

Erik continues to collect their clothes off the floor.

“You know, if you ever want to, I don’t mind if you… tie me up. Or blindfold me. … Have you ever thought about it? Punishing me… Cutting my skin, choking me, hurting me, bruising me…”

He can practically see Charles’s thoughts drift away to a dangerous, distant place.

Erik joins Charles on the bed and leans over him. He places his fingertips over the boy’s lips.

 _Don’t tempt me,_ he thinks.

“We’re not discussing this,” he says.

“Think about it.”

He does, and Erik hates himself for it.

\---

There are certain parts of their relationship that he will never get used to:

Charles coming to his work and dragging him to the nearest closet where he strips off his jeans and guides Erik’s hand to where he’d prepared himself with slick in the restroom; Charles hopping onto the dining table during breakfast, spreading his legs in front of Erik’s face as he takes his cock out and lies back; Charles forcefully taking Erik’s wrists and placing his hands around his neck, pushing him to squeeze until his pupils are bordered with wiry lines of red.

He can’t get used to Charles’s appetite for love, the way he adorns Erik with his affection every single morning and undresses him of stress every night.

He has trouble adjusting to Emma and Charles’s friendship, which starts off as an effort to simply appease Erik, then grows into a bond that he starts to feel only exists only to team up against Erik, if not make fun of him, and occasionally, aggravate him.

Then there’s Jakob’s calm acceptance. His father’s love is unchanged, untainted, and still as cathartic to his needs as when he was a child, loved and cared for by nobody else. But when Charles refuses to come to their fortnightly family dinner, Jakob doesn’t say a word to speculate.

\---

Publishing firms continue to reject him, but he continues to write, a myriad of manuscripts piling up at his desk.

He’s only smoked twice in the past year.

And two years into their relationship, they still share defeated glances when they’re asked,

“How did you two meet?”

\---

Charles’s forehead bumps against his. He pants, fingers digging into Erik’s shoulders, sliding up his cock with the raise of his hips and heavily dropping them to fill himself with it. Erik palms the boy’s arse, arm squeezing his waist. Their lips meet for a brief, fleeting kiss before the intensity of their bodies’ friction becomes too overpowering for them to hold.

Erik clutches Charles’s waist with both hands and thrusts upwards, letting out a guttural groan.

“Close?”

Charles nods. “You?” He clenches down.

“ _God_ … Yes.”

“Will you marry me?”

"What?"

Erik gasps to catch his breath. He runs his hand over his damp upper lip. 

"Marry me?"

Charles is still sitting on his cock, buried, asking Erik to marry him when they're one thrust away from orgasming. 

"Yes," he breathes, heart racing. "Yes, I want to marry you."

Charles throws his arms around Erik's neck and kisses him.

"Okay."

Then the indecent brat carries on fucking himself on Erik's cock.  

Stupid,  _stupid_ boy.

And Erik's going to marry him. 

What a perfect pair they're going to make.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always appreciated!


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